Sin Eater 3

I walked.

I didn’t know where to, and neither did I truly care to be honest. I couldn’t imagine a life where I was forced to eat another, so I simply walked. With any luck, the sun would come up soon and end this cursed existence because I knew my body would not tire of it.

I staggered into a tree and barely bothered to reorient myself before I kept on trudging in the knee-high snow. It had snowed heavily the night before when I had been lost in my despair and was currently falling once more, turning visibility nonexistent, not that I cared much for where I was going. I was already trying my hardest to die. East, North, West, South, what difference did my final destination make.

An upturned root hidden in the depths of the snow tripped me, and I fell face first. I could not even be bothered to struggle, to resist the incoming fall by throwing out my hands and trying to get a grip of something; instead, my body dropped like a stone thrown into a pond... a shallow one fair enough.

I stayed there for a long time, blessedly ignorant of the time that passed. Why was the sun taking Its sweet time rising, I needed out already. Maybe after this macabre second chance at life, I’d get a third or better yet be thrown back into my less pitiful former life. Ha, considering my wretched luck, I'd probably wake up in the belly of she who thirsts in the immaterial.

After an unknown number of hours face first in the snow, I didn’t feel the scorching heat of the sun erasing me from existence. so with a heave, I found myself on my feet.

It was a confusing sensation of being harder than I expected but easier than it should’ve been. The snow that fell off my form made me understand even in the depth of my despair, the reason I had survived. I had been covered by meters of snowfall, coupled with the bare sunlight that got past the clouds during this heavy winter and I was protected.

Daytime had passed me by once more.

“Ha!” I let out another bark of laughter as I looked up at the sky, searching for that iridescent sunlight once more, yet the coward hid behind the moon. Even when I tried my damned best to die, it seemed like that way lay shut to me. I felt a mad grin split my face as I found myself wondering if maybe I just needed to try harder. Assisted suicide by demon slayer blade perhaps?

I began to trudge forward once more, marginally more motivated than I started off, yet aiming for the same goal. Death. Not a good one, not a brave one, not even a particularly nice one. I simply wanted it to be over with. I didn’t care how anymore.

When my feet pressed against solid ground, I didn’t realize it. I didn’t realize I had been walking on a road for minutes, my senses dull to the people walking around me and throwing me glances till the scent finally managed to get past my enforced torpor.

I finally blinked unseeing eyes as the crowd of people walking gave me weird looks and made space for me as I walked. The sound and scents of a multitude of unwashed and barely clean people in mostly rags began to seep past my torpor, and with every new breath, I began to realize I was in a city, or judging by the clothes and the hovels that were supposed to be buildings, a village.

The most surprising thing to me as I walked down the barely lit road was the people. I had never seen so many Asians in my life, and walking through their midst, I found out that I could never disguise myself as one. I looked more like a mixed foreigner than anything. The few people who were brave enough to match my stare immediately forced their eyes to their feet as they hugged their rags tighter to their bodies.

That was when the second most surprising thing really sunk in. These people were poor. So poor that they could barely wear actual clothes, most of them only had on a pair of ragged and tattered clothes that were tied at the hips with rags serving as coats that they hugged to their body. That’s what made me realize how badly I stood out.

Even with the gash in my kimono, it was still a finely crafted and embroidered kimono, leagues above whatever these peasants wore, matched with the blade on my hips and the deference shown to me, none would even raise their head long enough to stare at me for longer than a second.

My eyes drifted away from the particular peasant I had been watching and my legs began to move automatically as I felt that familiar pang once more, hunger tearing its way through me as even underneath the stench that came from not bathing for days, I could feel the blood pumping in their veins, tell apart the ones that had more meat on their frame compared to the ones that didn’t even under their threadbare clothes.

Tell the diseased from the clean, and that must’ve been what helped me keep the hunger in check, the patient wolf locked behind the door still. Most of the people that we passed were… impure in some way. Diseased blood, pockmarked skin, frostbitten extremities.

I was suddenly forced to remember different demons usually had a preferred taste in different people, what was mine? Judging from how ravenous I had been after I woke up and how I remember feasting on the men on the battlefield I made a simple guess that it was warriors. Perhaps.

“Ubuyashiki-sama?!” A voice called out close to me, but I ignored it lost in my contemplation. If I was lucky, I would feel the kiss of the sun before I was too hungry to lose all sense and feed, regardless of the kind of person I was feeding on. “Ubuyashiki-sama.” The voice was closer now and had finally drawn my attention, but that was because of the sheer guts the person had by dragging me by the hemming of my kimono.

I turned slowly and looked at the face of the older man. He was a stooped elder with gray-white hair and almost cloudy eyes, yet his clothes were a cut above the rest of the peasants that walked the road. The moment he caught sight of my face, his eyes widened as his spindly limbs reached up to cradle my face.

I stared at him confused, the shock factor was the main reason I watched him with apathetic and confused eyes as he cried and cradled my face.

“Ubuyashiki-sama! You’re back, and you're healed? I- I can’t see the necrosis anymore, your skin is smooth?” The man stuttered out in between his sobs as people on the road began to look at us, the scene was drawing attention, and not even their deference was enough to stop simply human curiosity.

That was when the name he called me finally registered. Ubuyashiki. Wasn’t that the name of the family that began the Demon Slayer Corps as restitution for what their ancestor did?

The confusion must have shown on my face and coupled with my continued silence, the man got the memo and quickly wiped his face before getting a grip on my sleeve and trying to drag me off.

“Come, you must be tired. I will have them prepare something for you at the inn.”

I followed along a second later after the man’s feeble strength failed to move me, and I allowed myself to sink into my thoughts. My memory of Demon Slayer was not the best, and I didn’t know much of the manga considering I was a full-time anime follower, but wasn’t Muzan also an Ubuyashiki, and doesn’t this mean I’m even more fucked?

…

I let out a deep sigh as I allowed myself to sink deep into the medieval wooden tub of hot water. Unlike the cold that I could hardly notice or feel, there was something different about the heat.

The gentle embrace of the steaming hot tub and the water's warmth enveloped me like a lover's tender caress. Thick steam curled upward, drifting in the small room and creating a hazy veil that made it hard to see anything. The soothing heat seeped into my muscles, the closest thing to modernity I had experienced in the past days and I could feel it coaxing away at the knots that had been formed over the past few days.

For the first time, I felt peace as with my eyes closed, I surrendered myself to the sensation that was resting myself in a hot tub. Ignorant of the world outside instead lay, floating, and suspended in the hot tub.

I couldn’t tell how long I was there, but I hated the very moment the water began to slowly grow cold and tepid; in the way, it lost all heat and life and slowly drew me back to the waking world as the pang that I had managed to ignore for so long began to rise once more. This time I didn’t have the torpor I had sank into the last time to shield me from the hunger. My eyes slowly opened and I realized sometime during my soak I had drifted down to the bottom of the tub.

It took nothing to slip my way out of the watery cocoon as I took my first breath in a long time once more, and noticed the most curious thing. It didn’t feel any different. Holding my breath and actually breathing. Did demons not need to breathe?

I focused on my musing and curiosity and it allowed me to do something other than feel my hunger as my hands went through the unfamiliar yet familiar motion that was wearing weird undergarments and slipping into a brand-new embroidered kimono.

What did we truly know about demons other than the fact that they hated sunlight, needed to feed on humans, and could only be killed by a nichrin sword and that weird poison flower, the name eluded me but I knew if I saw it I’d recognize it.

The only person that had shown some interest in learning about demon physiology was Tamayo and I wasn’t even sure she was around. My brain wracked itself as I moved out of the bathroom on autopilot and tried my hardest to remember all the details I could about her.

I wasn't sure where I was in the timeline, but I knew she was old. Older than even any of the current demon slayers and even the Upper Moons. Old enough to have seen Yorichii almost kill Muzan. I didn’t know exactly how it went down, and once again, I cursed my impatience and lack of complete manga knowledge, but I remembered reading somewhere that she used to work under Muzan before she left him.

Then it came to me like a thunderbolt from the sky. She didn’t eat people. The knowledge hit me so hard that I stumbled and had to grab a wall for balance in the corridor that led to the lower floor where I knew the old man was waiting for me.

“Are you okay, sir?” a courtesan asked me, clad in her beautiful and brightly patterned kimono. She had worry written on her features as she made to get a hold of me. “I could take you—”

"Don't touch me!" I batted her hands aside and pushed her to the wall, continuing to stagger off as her sweet scent found its way into my nostrils, and my brain interpreted it. She was not like one of the dirty and sickened people outside. No, she was a prized courtesan, treated and taken care of by the madam.

Suddenly the wolf was at the door once more, salivating and hungering, and I was finding it hard to keep rationalizing why I shouldn’t turn back and take a tiny bite. Surely she could live on with a leg and a hand. I wouldn’t mind a kidney or lung either. She has two anyway. I'm sure she wouldn’t mind sparing the redundant organ.

“Ubuyashiki-sama.” I blinked as that name wiped the hunger from my eyes, and I found out that I had taken a step back up the stairs. The courtesan lay frozen at the peak of the stairs. Something in my eyes had halted her, and she lay still, barely taking another breath. A prey caught in the gaze of a predator.

“Ubuyashiki Hanzo-sama.” The older man called, and I blinked before looking down the stairs. I saw him look at me, anxious and worried, as he made his way to me. He took hold of my hand and began to drag me downstairs, but not before turning to the still frightened courtesan and making a curt bow.

“Sorry about that. He is not feeling too well. I hope you can forgive me.” Ignoring—or more likely, uncaring of—the reply, he continued pulling at me, leading me into a private room.

He closed the sliding door behind us, and I slowly found my way to a futon and sat as I buried my face in my hands once more, thinking. Ubuyashiki Hanzo. That was my name. I knew that with certainty, as it had the echo of familiarity to it.

A woman calls the name playfully, and an older man barks the name with some bite. A younger man of the same age as me called it out as we played, and a younger girl called it as she chased after me.

“Ubuyashiki-sama, are you alright? I had hoped that you’d feel better after a long bath. What happened? Where did you run off to a week ago?”

The man questioned me, but my interest was already drifting away as thoughts of Tamayo returned. Something foolish, something unsettling, began to stir in my chest: hope, the precursor to disappointment. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't suppress that feeling, fueled as it was by my understanding of the series.

By the time canon had come about, Tamayo was the closest thing this world had to a scientist who focused on demons, and she had been researching a cure. She was also the sole demon that had sworn off violence, somehow managing to survive off donated human blood only, peacefully coexisting with a community instead of decimating it like a feral animal.

“I need to find her.”

“What?” the older man asked with confusion. I didn’t realize I had said that out loud, but for the first time since I woke up in this world, I had a clear, definite goal. I had an actual reason to live.

I brought my hands up from my face as I peered at the man’s features deeply, and memories slowly came back to me. Isamu—no family name—was one of my family's oldest retainers. He had been an old man for as long as I had known him having watched more than one generation of Ubuyashiki die and had been my primary caretaker.

“I’ve called the carriage over, and it’s outside already. We must go back to the estate immediately, Hanzo-sama. The family would be worried. You were only supposed to go on a routine trip to the doctor, not run away.”

More details came in. I was seventeen, or was it eighteen? The curse had begun to creep up on me. Slower than my older brother and current heir to the family, but faster than I had hoped. I feared death. That had been the major reason my former self had tried to steer clear of violence and fighting in general, only forced to carry a blade as a noble and in case of emergencies.

I had been comfortable living a mediocre life as the accountant of the family and record keeper until I began to grow sick like all that were cursed with my blood were bound to.

I had gone searching for cures after curses across different doctors like every able-bodied man in my family had once done. A hopeless trial to defeat our fate. Here the memories became fragmented. I had run off and stumbled into a fight, and I met HIM.

“Muz—”

“Ahhhhhhh!” A scream of such pain and sorrow that it reverberated in the four corners of the inn rang out, and I found myself snapping to my feet. Trying my best to spread out my senses and awareness, I began to perceive smoke.

Smoke, ash, and something more familiar. Blood. More screams began to ring out, most of them from further away and some from inside the inn, and I found my eyes drifting to the window. With some effort, I walked over to it, snapped it open, and I suddenly could see it.

Over on the horizon, fire. It was spreading fast, decimating everything in its path, but ashes and smoke were not the main scents in the air; it was the blood. It came to me so fast but at the same time so slow. I spun on my feet and called out even as I reached out for the old man. There had been a knock on the door and the old man had gone to see who was at the door.

“Isamu!!!”

He had walked up to the door and had slid it open the moment I called out to him. He turned back and smiled at me in response, which was why he didn’t see the hand that burst its way through his chest and out his back.

In its grip was a red, squishy-looking meaty organ with valves that sprouted blood. A simple cog in the wheel that was the human body, yet one that the body could not do without. A heart.

My eyes drifted from the red organ to Isamu’s face, and even with blood leaking down his lips, horror etched on his face, and tears in his eyes, he called out to me.

“R-Run.”

Before I could process the word, the owner of the hand swung his limb to the side, and Old Man Isamu, noble guardian and retainer of the Ubuyashiki family, was sent flying before slamming into the wooden wall and sliding down to the ground slowly, all limbs in the wrong positions.

“Ah, there you are.” The figure finally took a step into the room, one hand blood-soaked to the elbow and body splattered with blood from the people it killed before making its way here.

“I’ve been searching for you for a long time now, you little glutton.”

A/N: That is all for now. Appeasing you guys with two chapters written over the course of 24hours because I need the next week or two to create a new backlog of chapters for CE. I just want you guys to know where I’m heading with this, and maybe add another chapter over the weekend if I can.