His mind was strangely distracted and unsettled. He kept feeling something stuck in his throat.
“What’s wrong? It’s like you’re somewhere else,” Zenitsu said in an anxious tone, and he tugged on the sleeve of Tanjiro’s haori coat. “Did something happen?”
“He’s prob’ly hungry,” Inosuke said, chewing on some mochi from the party. “You didn’t eat anything back there, did you? There was a whole mountain of delicious stuff too. Stupid.”
He gulped down the last of the mochi and slammed a fist against his chest. “Hang on, Senjiro. I’ll go back and get you the rest of that food!”
“Uh—no! You don’t have to do that!” Finally snapping out of it, Tanjiro hurried to stop Inosuke’s wild mission before it could start. He couldn’t let him charge back into that celebration like some bandit. He’d ruin the happy day.
“Don’t be shy. It’s a boss’s duty to take care of his underlings.”
“I’m not being shy. I’m just not hungry.”
“Don’t eat when you can, and you’ll regret it, y’know? There was a hunk of meat this big, okay?! A whole heap of fruit too!”
“I’m telling you, I’m really not hungry, Inosuke,” Tanjiro insisted.
But Inosuke was like a dog with a bone, eventually forcing Tanjiro to bow deeply and beg Inosuke to not go back. Inosuke finally (albeit very grudgingly) gave up on his mission.
Zenitsu peered at Tanjiro’s face, looking slightly concerned. “What’s the matter, Tanjiro? You’ve been weird this whole time.”
“Weird?” Tanjiro’s eyebrows shot up. “Me?”
“Yeah. You’re making, like, a weird sound.”
A moment of silence passed, during which Tanjiro’s heart skipped a beat. Zenitsu’s sense of hearing was much sharper than that of the average person, and he could even pick out the “sounds” of different emotions. It worked a lot like Tanjiro’s own sense of smell.
And now he was saying that Tanjiro sounded weird. Flustered, Tanjiro remained silent.
“I get it,” Zenitsu murmured, preempting any explanation from Tanjiro with an unusually serious expression on his face. “It’s about Nezuko, right?”
“Uh—”
Tanjiro’s heart jumped up into his throat. When Tanjiro was at a loss for words, Zenitsu nodded to himself with a look that said he understood everything.
“You were picturing the day when Nezuko gets married, and you got all sad, didn’t you?”
Tanjiro stared at Zenitsu, dumbfounded. “Huh?”
“Listen, Tanjiro. You can’t be like that. For Nezuko’s sake, just be happy for her when someone comes along to marry her, okay?”
Tanjiro still could not muster a sound. Zenitsu’s comments slightly missed the mark. In his mind, demon Nezuko would get married like a normal girl and go off to be with her husband’s family like a normal girl. Zenitsu’s thinking wasn’t too surprising since he had never been concerned that Nezuko was a demon.
Tanjiro was deeply grateful for his friend’s mindset, but that wasn’t quite what was troubling him. He had this feeling that there was something fundamentally, definitively different going on in his heart, but he didn’t know what it was. It just felt bad, like a small bone lodged in his throat.
“Yeah. You’re making, like, a weird sound.”
“It’s about Nezuko, right?”
Why had he jumped in such surprise at Zenitsu’s harmless comments? Confused, he gently placed a hand over his heart.
Thmp … thmp … He felt it carving out its tiny rhythm and opened his ears, listening as hard as he could. Still, he couldn’t hear this sound that Zenitsu was talking about.
Well, of course not. It’s not like my ears are as sharp as his. What exactly was going on with him? Tanjiro frowned.
Unaware of the confusion Tanjiro was feeling, Zenitsu spoke brightly of the day Nezuko would marry, while Inosuke listed the foods they had eaten earlier that were most delicious. Just when the anxious gloom in his heart was starting to overwhelm Tanjiro, he heard a childish voice cry out.
“Listen, Akari! You obviously can’t, okay? It’ll be dark soon. You’ll get eaten by demons.”
“But I want to marry into a big house in town just like Toyo! I don’t wanna work!” protested an even younger voice.
“I said no!”
“You big meanie! You’re no fun! You’re a stupid meanie!”
“What did you say?! Go ahead and say that one more time!”
Tanjiro looked over and saw two little girls arguing. One was around ten, and the other was maybe seven. Their faces—brows furrowed, cheeks puffed out—were surprisingly alike, so they were probably sisters.
“Like Toyo” … Does she mean the bride from the party?
Tanjiro walked toward them, and the younger girl grabbed on to the older girl’s sleeve when she caught sight of him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, crouching down so as not to scare them. “What are you fighting about?”
The older girl glanced at him and replied with her own question. “Are you a Demon Slayer? You’re staying at Mrs. Hisa’s house.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded. “I’m Tanjiro. Are you sisters?”
“Yes. I’m Akane,” the older girl said. “This is my little sister Akari.”
The shy Akari hid behind her sister. She then poked her face out to peek at Tanjiro before ducking back.
Tanjiro grinned at this very childlike gesture. Rokuta used to be like that too. Actually, Shigeru, Hanako, Takeo, and even Nezuko had all gone through a stage like this.
As he remembered those long-gone days, Tanjiro asked the sisters, “When you said ‘Toyo,’ did you mean the girl who’s marrying the merchant in town?”
“Yes,” Akane said.