Disclaimer: Demon Slayer is not mine. This fanfic is a translation.
Enjoy Reading!
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"Mitsuka!"
Tamayo suddenly opened her eyes. She subconsciously reached out her hand to grab her daughter, but the air was the only thing she grabbed.
When her blurred vision gradually focused, the wisteria forest had disappeared like the dream it was.
Instead, she was staring at the ceiling of her own bedroom.
Her outstretched hand froze in midair as she woke up with her long eyelashes trembling.
"Tamayo-sama!" Yushiro was sitting next to her and quickly went by her side, looking at her with concern.
"Are you okay? Just now..." Yushiro paused his questioning and was stunned by the sight of Tamayo's face.
Tamayo slowly turned her head, and she noticed Yushiro's gaze. She lowered her hand to touch her face.
Cold skin and fresh tears track silently flowing down her face. Tamayo looked at her fingers, and a wave of disappointment engulfed her.
She covered her face with both her hands as the tears refused to stop pouring.
The room was silent, as neither person wanted to interrupt this moment.
After several minutes, Tamayo slowly supported herself on the edge of the bed, trying to sit up.
Yushiro quickly came to his senses as he bent over and helped Tamayo.
"...please be careful."
"Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?"
Tamayo blinked her eyes slowly as she processed the question. She thought about it for a second, then shook her head.
Yushiro's eyes remembered the state in which Tamayo-sama left her work station and the experiment she had been working on; his face turned solemn at the reminder.
"Tamayo-sama, I carefully checked your workbench."
"I found that the guy's blood was slowly evaporating into the air."
"I'm afraid you accidentally inhaled that guy's blood, which caused you to faint." Yushiro looked over Tamayo's form. He squinted his eyes with some vigilance.
"Is it because of the blue spider lily? "
Tamayo listened to Yushiro's speculation in total silence. She was lost in thought for the majority of it.
Tamayo's gaze slowly focused on the wall in front of her, and the blood drops on the microscope kept flashing in her mind.
"I saw my daughter."
Yushiro stopped his thinking and raised his head. He looked a little dazed at Tamayo's revelation.
"And my husband," Tamayo continues; her tone of voice has a touch of longing, of a home long lost, of trying to remember happier times.
"...It's definitely not a dream." Tamayo rests her head on her intertwined hands.
After Tamayo got dragged away, she didn't immediately wake up.
Her "body" began sinking.
Until she fell into a quite dark place compared to the wisteria forest where she met her family.
Unlike the blurred beauty of the wisteria, all the figures here were very distorted.
And those who were here were no exception.
All of them have an evil aura with hideous faces and a slash mark on their neck.
When the ugly demons turned around and looked at her with puzzled expressions.
Tamayo suddenly realized.
The place where she was dragged away from was the other side of the shore.
And this...
—This is Hell.
She was sent here to atone for her sins of eating people.
This is probably why she can't stay with her family for long, and she was shackled by her chains.
"It's the escapee."
"Ah, she's finally dead?"
"Did Muzan-sama kill her?"
"There are no marks on her neck, so it should be."
Murmurs of conversations were heard all over Hell.
However, she couldn't hear any more words...
As she opened her eyes at that moment, she escaped from Hell by waking up.
Tamayo moved her gaze to search for the four syringes filled with Tanjuro's blood and spotted them at her bed desk.
Live on...
She remembered the last words her daughter uttered echoing in her mind.
It made her feel incredibly heavy-hearted as her regrets of killing her family and slaughtering innocent people came back ten times worse.
She was supposed to die from her illness.
The tragic scene of the carnage of her family members kept replaying in her mind more frequently now.
"Muzan...!" Tamayo muttered through her gritted teeth, her brow furrowed tightly, and rage veins pulsed all over her body, giving Yushiro a rare sight of an angry Lady Tamayo.
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-A few days later-
-Location: Unknown forest-
The ground was damp and muddy. There was a line of footprints that could be seen even in the dim lighting.
Drip, drip.
The figure in the purple-black snake-patterned haori walked through the woods.
He was tall and red-haired with a hideous dark red mark on his left forehead.
The jagged blade at his waist proved his identity as a swordsman.
"...those who have exhausted their paths will return to the same place."
Kokushibo muttered repeatedly.
He raised his head to finally look at the environment around him.
His powerful perception brought by the Transparent World allowed him to continue walking without hitting the trees or objects in his path. His observations tell everything about what's around him, even the faint feel of other creatures' emotions.
He saw a butterfly flapping its wings in front of him. He raised his index finger and watched as the butterfly fluttered and landed safely on his fingertip.
This was something he had seen Yoriichi do when he was a child.
'Yoriichi...'
Kokushibo's gaze was focused on the butterfly on his finger.
'I can do it too...'
He had been walking aimlessly for days since his battle with Tanjuro.
He was lost in his thoughts and his feelings.
'What is the meaning of my existence as a demon?'
He walked into the deep mountain and secluded himself in meditation. It was a quiet and undisturbed time in his life.
Kokushibo felt a peace of mind that was completely different from the past.
He arrived in an open prairie and raised his head to look at the moon with his six eyes.
Rumble.
The beautiful canvas of the night sky suddenly darkened with clouds. The moonlight finally disappeared completely behind the raining clouds.
Damp, cold rain fell slowly in a drizzle that quickly turned into a pouring flood.
'...'
'The rain in early spring is quite cold.'
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"Hoo... Hoo..."
Amidst this heavy rain that washed the forest, a man wearing a bamboo hat and straw raincoat was trudging through the muddy mountain path.
The dense raindrops connected into lines, forming a curtain of rain. Thunder rumbling in the background creates an oppressive atmosphere across the entire mountain.
The man reached out to hold the stone boulder beside him, clutching his hat to resist it flying off in the strong wind. He walked carefully, one step forward at a time.
"...I need to hurry!" His teeth chattered from the cold; dark eyes scanned his surroundings in this dense rain.
"Where is it..."
The man was looking for a flower.
A yellow flower called forsythia.
His wife was sick at home with a high fever.
If he didn't hurry up and find that flower, he was afraid that his life would perish first in this weather.
The man felt more and more urgency in his heart, and his breathing became more rapid.
Fortunately,
As the man looked up to see the path, he saw it in the corner of his vision.
The cluster of yellow flowers that grew on the side of the cliff, dangerously swaying in the rain.