A strange peace she didn't feel in a long time wrapped her up like a blanket. A fire seemed to be by her, but it didn't burn her, it protected her with its arms and melted the snow to give life to all it grazed. As if it gave back the comforting sun rays of spring after a long and merciless winter.
The first thing Ayaka thought was that it felt good.
With a smile unconsciously appearing on her lips she snuggled closer to the person hugging her.
It was as if no wrongdoings existed in the world, nothing could ever disturb her or make her suffer and cry. As if she had gone back to being eleven again.
She could feel someone else's breathing on her clean hair.
"Yuu," she muttered, letting out one of those sighs one only lets out when they have no worries in life.
She opened her eyes, so calm it didn't feel real.
Instead of being face to face with Yuu Kobayashi, just as she expected, the only person she saw was Tanjirou Kamado.
He was close, very close.
"Did you say something?" he asked, having woken up not much later than her.
Ayaka took a moment to look around her, realizing for the first time she wasn't eleven and that this was, without a doubt, Tanjirou with his arms around her. He groggily rubbed his eye with his hand, but he made no attempt in taking his arms away from Ayaka's body.
"Are you sick? You have a weird expression on your face," Tanjirou asked, trying not to sound worried, but small pinches sometimes touched the surface of his voice.
Ayaka realized he was right, her face had contorted on itself, making way to a bizarre expression, between disappointment, confusion, and something she wouldn't know what to call. Disgust, probably.
Finally she took in the importance of the situation.
Her eyes went from Tanjirou's arm around her waist to his face a few times with an eyebrow raised in an accusatory manner, waiting for him to notice by himself what was wrong. Even if his nose was still buried in between her hair.
«It's settled, he's dumb»
Harshly and with crimson cheeks, she pushed against Tanjirou's forehead, making him take his arms from around her.
That seemed to get him out of his own thoughts, and because he was Tanjirou, he proceeded to apologize profusely.
"I'm very sorry, you just smelled so good and seemed to be so cold and I-!" He moved his hands without control, in fast and clumsy gestures.
It would have made Ayaka to make fun of him if it weren't because his insistent habit of apologizing for everything annoyed her, and because she was embarrassed about it too.
"At this point the only thing you have yet to apologize about is being alive," she said in calm, finally getting and urging Tanjirou to do the same so she could collect the futon.
Her cheeks were still burning.
Tanjirou opened his mouth, attempting to apologize again, but he stopped himself before doing it and closed it.
"By the way, where is Nezuko?" Ayaka asked as she aired the futon. Then she looked out the window, at the darkness of twilight. "The Sun will rise soon, make sure she's safe by then."
"She must have gone back to her box already, she usually does it a bit before sunrise," Tanjirou answered, leaning his cheek on his fist, as he observed like in a trance how Ayaka folded the futon, too big for her, and got it on the closet as if she had been doing it all her life.
Once everything was tidy, Ayaka vaguely gestured for Tanjirou to follow her out of the room without stopping to check if he was following her or not.
"Take it," she said, as she threw his uniform, clean and without a wrinkle in sight, to his chest. Tanjirou stopped himself from yelling in surprise.
"It's even better than when I got it." He couldn't help but say, holding it on his hands as his eyes shined in amazement. "You're so cool, Aya-san."
She simply ignored him, moving fastly through the kitchen as she took the leftovers from the night before to make breakfast.
She knew that room like the palm of her hand. For as much time as she spent away, the memories ingrained in the body are never forgotten, like how an artist has encarved the ways to move their hands in order to draw.
Everything was still the same, although now there was the smallest dust coating that served as proof of her absence. If she had been there the dust would be no more, since she was the only one able to see it, she was the only one able to clean it.
She should do it the next time she came to visit, whenever that would be.
"Do you want me to help you?" Tanjirou offered as he saw over her shoulder how Ayaka prepared the rice on the boiling water over the fire.
He made an attempt to grab the spoon that hung on the edge of the pot, but Ayaka pushed him away with a slap before he could.
"I don't need your help, I can do it by myself, "she harshly said, giving Tanjirou a threatening glance that ordered him to stay sat without making any noise.
He obeyed without complaint as he sweated profusely, sitting with tense shoulders and not daring to do anything.
Time passed in silence, the sound of the bubbling water being the only thing to hear along with the slight echoing chirps of the birds outside.
"I can't understand why you think I'm amazing," Ayaka confessed in a grimace. She had gotten used to the constant sound of Tanjirou's voice chattering voice for the past two days, and it was weird not to hear it, as strange as that sounded. "To be fair, I don't even consider myself a good person, although I don't care either way. The only useful thing I'm good at is sword fighting, and I'm content with that."
Tanjirou looked at her from his place in curiosity, as she checked over the food on the fire.
"There is no particular reason, must there be one?" he answered in confusion.
"Of course there must be one. If not, it wouldn't make any sense," Ayaka replied as if it was something everyone should know. "Take me, for example. I look up to Himejima-shishou because he's very strong and brave, and even if he's suffered greatly he's still on his own two feet."
Tanjirou took his time to think. It was funny to look at his intensely concentrated face.
"Then I think it's the same reasons why you think Himejima-san is amazing," he simply said, shrugging in the process.
Ayaka gave him a glance filled in with scepticism along with slightly red ears, since comparing her to the Stone Pillar was the greatest compliment one could ever give her.
Tanjirou's eyes didn't seem to lie.
"How foolish," she said. "I'm not like Himejima-shishou, not even close. Besides, how would you even know that if you don't know him?"
Tanjirou shrugged again. "I just know," he only answered.
"If you look up to me so much, can you do me the favour of bringing me my uniform?" Ayaka huffed in a bad mood. "It's on the table."
With a son's obedience, Tanjirou did just as she said. Estranged, he noticed there was something in the pocket, and from there he took out a piece of paper, wrinkled and destroyed by the water and the soap.
"Aya, there was something in your pocket," Tanjirou explained, holding on his hands what had once been a letter.
She froze, brown eyes fixed on Tanjirou's hands. She hurried to run by his side, where she took that strange piece of paper with trembling hands.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" From her mouth came a string of curses Tanjirou had only heard the elderly from his village say.
"Aya, are you okay?" Tanjirou's hand laid on her shoulder but she roughly brushed it away.
"No, Tanjirou! Nothing about this is okay!" Ayaka was starting to lose her temper, so she let a trembling sigh and brushed one eye with her sleeve that had started to feel just a bit wet. "I forgot, I forgot, how could I forget, because I was so careless and I-"
"What did you forget?" Tanjirou asked softly. Ayaka let him put his hand on her this time.
"Himejima-shishou's letter," she answered in a small voice, unfolding it on her hands to check if there was something left she could read. "I forgot to take it out of my pocket when I washed my uniform and now it's completely destroyed."
"It's not that bad, it's just a letter, I'm sure your master will understand," Tanjirou tried to cheer up, which only made things wrong.
A whimper escaped from Ayaka's throat as she tried to control her frustration.
"You don't understand, he doesn't write letters, and that he's sent me one, knowing how much it takes for him to do it, made it something special. And because I was careless now it's-" Her fists tightened around the letter avoiding looking towards Tanjirou, not even a second were his innocent eyes off of her. "It's been completely ruined."
"Is that why you're sad?" That question alone petrified her. She had the feeling he didn't just say it because of the letter.
Ayaka smelled of sadness, not only then but all the time, as much as she tried to hide it with fury. He risked to say there was even a light smell of fear.
It was a stupid question. She wasn't sad, was she? It didn't feel that way.
That was how it had always been, because that was how strong people were, the truly strong. They didn't let anyone walk over them and they didn't need anyone else's help, and she fulfilled those two requirements.
Sad? Why would she be? She was just like how she had always wanted to be, or at least on the way to. Being a pillar meant being strong and indestructible, and that was her goal.
Then why wasn't she able to answer that question?
"Can you show me the letter?" Tanjirou asked, interrupting her own thoughts. He seemed strangely curious for a soaked piece of paper.
She kept thinking about what he had said, and even then Ayaka looked at him with a raised eyebrow and just let him take it from her hands.
It didn't take time for him to arrive at the table, stretching it completely. Ayaka stayed still for a moment as she looked at him just to go back to the boiling rice, which she had left unattended for too long.
Her eyes couldn't help but get distracted by the questionable actions of her partner, stealing one too many looks as she tried not to leave the pot without supervision for too long.
He just moved the paper from one side to the other, looking from different angles and raising it against the window for the sun rays to illuminate it.
«He sure is a weirdo», Ayaka thought, looking over at him carefully hoping he didn't notice.
Yeah, Tanjirou Kamado was a weirdo, she shouldn't listen to anything he said about her.
"It can be fixed!" he exclaimed smiling. Ayaka jumped in surprise at his sudden yell, letting the wooden spoon fall. It fell down the soup, being set free of her grap and going down, down, down until it settled on the bottom and she couldn't see it anymore.
"Don't yell," she hissed, giving a glance back towards the rooms.
She checked if her parents nor her grandmother had woken up and put off the fire, having finished her task and sliding by Tanjirou's side.
"Did you say you could fix it?" she asked warily, trying not to show the hope that promise had given her.
Her partner fervently nodded, close to lightning up the room with his enthusiasm.
"It's my problem, you don't have to do it," Ayaka reminded with a frown, not knowing if it would be correct to let him do it.
"It's the least I can do after everything you've done for me. I want to return the favour, even with something as small as this," Tanjirou replied with a shrug. Ayaka just looked at him weirdly.
What had she done for him, besides yelling and ordering him around?
"You protected me from that demon, don't you remember?" Tanjirou started as he noticed the look she was giving him. "I was going to dodge it, although nearly, but you slashed off his arm so it wouldn't hurt me either way."
Ayaka would have objected, but he continued talking, being him the one to ignore her that time.
"You didn't behead Nezuko either or reported us to the corps, and you've brought us to your house." Ayaka's mouth opened yet again, but Tanjirou stopped her. "You even went as far as to advise me about Kibutsuji, and you accepted sleeping with me so that Nezuko could get out of the box last night."
She really had nothing on her mind to reply with. That bastard, Tanjirou, just stared happily at her as if something good came from all that.
Soon, at her lack of words, (which was something that didn't happen quite often, least of all to her), her cheeks acquired the colour of her haori. A greatly intense dark red manifested itself on them, and she found her voice to be trembling.
"That... that was all for my own good, it just annoyed me to see you dirty and.... everything else would have just hurt me as a demon slayer," she replied, trying unsuccessfully to recompose.
Tanjirou didn't care about whatever it was she tried to use as an excuse.
"Maybe that's it, but I like to think you're kind, Aya." Tanjirou's smile made him squint, leaving clear just how round his cheeks were. "Besides, it's never a bad thing to accept a bit of help from time to time, that's what partners are for, right? You can't always do everything by yourself."
Dammit, he was so warm. At that point she wouldn't be surprised if Tanjirou wasn't a child of the Sun.
With a foreign clumsiness Tanjirou had never seen her wear, Ayaka got up and returned to the kitchen with a slightly trembling "think whatever you want" as she grabbed her red hair ribbon and tied her hair on a loose ponytail.
Ayaka didn't like Tanjirou, he didn't like him at all.
But maybe he wasn't that bad, not that much.
«You must learn to accept others. You won't be able to defeat all demons by yourself». Himejima-shishou's voice echoed through her head, acting as her consciousness in the less appropriate of the moments.
Was that what he meant?
She stole a last peek at Tanjirou, who found himself carefully trying to dry the letter with a piece of cloth.
No, there was no way.
ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ
"Don't forget about dad's medicine, make sure grandma doesn't burn herself out and that mum doesn't spend all her time in her garden." Ayaka continued listing warnings and rules for Kobayashi to follow while she was away.
On his part the boy looked mortified, as he tried to remember every and one of them, but it was impossible, there were too many. That's how Ayaka was after all, he knew more than anyone.
Not too far from her were her parents and her grandmother, who said their goodbyes to Tanjirou with great feelings.
"Come visit whenever you want, the doors to the Iwamoto house will be open for you whenever, Tanjirou-san!," her mother exclaimed as she tenderly grabbed Tanjirou's hands between hers.
"If you need anything just come and we'll help you," her father said by her side, calmer and with that smile of his that never wavered from his lips.
"And don't go around getting into trouble or I'll be the one to scold you," her grandmother warned as she gave small hits against his forehead with her fan, no intention of hurting him.
Tanjirou happily accepted all of it, finally letting Ayaka's parents (more like just her mother) drown him in a mortal embrace.
«If there's a hug that could be compared to Nezuko's», Ayaka thought, «it would be hers».
Not too late after they finished breakfast, both of their crows yelled their respective missions, and they didn't stop until the two of them dressed in their uniforms and got out of the house, where they said their goodbyes before going off again on their responsibilities as demon slayers.
The gods had heard Ayaka's prayers the night before, because Tanjirou had been assigned to the North while she was sent to the South, making them break up yet again.
It wasn't needed to say she was relieved, since she wouldn't have to see him anymore.
At least that's what she believed, because the gods had only heard half of her prayers.
"Let's go, Tanjirou, we don't have time for this," Ayaka urged, taking him by the sleeve of his uniform to separate him from her parents' embrace, which had started to be too long.
They would have to continue together on their way before they finally got separated and she was impatient.
"Aya, there's no need for such a rush," Tanjirou said as he continued being pulled by her.
She didn't let go of him until they started walking, and Ayaka wouldn't have looked back if not for her mother's voice.
"Ayaka," she called. Sweat soaked her forehead in the slightest way possible, this had never happened before. Not at least that she had seen. She hadn't used their familiar "A-chan" either, which was bizarre on its own.On her hands she held a small box she shily offered to her.
Her daughter waited for her mother to continue talking, expecting and with a raised eyebrow. It was finally her father who continued:
"We don't want you starving while you defeat demons, right?"
Ayaka's brown eyes settled curiously on the box without a word.
"They're rice balls. You've always loved them so please take them with you," her mother spoke again, offering the present again.
"I don't need this, mum. You shouldn't give them to me, I can buy my own food." As naive and generous as her mum was, it didn't surprise Ayaka something like this happened.
However, as much of an amazing sight she had, she couldn't see what her mother would do next.
"No! You are going to accept these rice balls even if you want to or not! I don't care about your excuses or that it's demon slayer things, you're going to take these rice balls and you'll eat them, or if you want you can share them with your comrades, I don't care!!" she yelled. She looked angry, angrier than she had ever seen her, and for the first time in her life, that anger was directed at Ayaka.
The aforementioned was as lost as one could be, too surprised to even think about an answer to give her. So, as Ayaka stayed with her eyes open out of amazement and buried in between her own confusion, her mother threw the box at her chest and she was forced to take it with her hands so as to not let it fall to the ground.
"So you are going to take those rice balls, and you'll kill a lot of demons because I know my daughter can do it and you'll come back to visit us!" her mother continued, ingraining her finger on Ayaka's chest repeatedly as she took steps back.
"I was going to... come visit again soon." She could only stammer with the box on her hands, still with all the weight of surprise against her.
Taking advantage of this, her mother trapped her on an aggressive hug that raised her from the floor, which left her dizzy. She would be a good demon slayer if she wanted, with those big arms of hers she was nearly Himejima-shishou's size. It was just bad luck she couldn't hurt a fly.
Her grandmother hit her forehead with her fan, not like Tanjirou, but in a way it would leave a bruise (again) that would be there for days.
"Ayaka Iwamoto, don't you dare die," she threatened, and it wasn't a joke.
"Yeah, A-chan, don't die, and make sure to kill a lot of demons." It was her father this time who patted her back a few times. "We'll be cheering you on from here."
He was kidding, but that didn't mean the weight on his words lifted, not even a little.
She was so dizzy still she couldn't even dare give a response to their goodbyes.
Maybe this was why only those without family swore to destroy all demons, because they didn't have a family to go back to that made them promise they wouldn't die.
"Move already! Or are you going to stay there all day!?" her grandmother exclaimed, hitting her lower back (which was the most she could reach without jumping) in a cheerful pat.
Ayaka was sure she had heard a few cracks.
"Yeah, yeah I will," she said in a confused blink. She turned to a smiling Tanjirou, who waited for her not too far from where she was.
She brought back her gaze to her family one last time, and she timidly waved goodbye. Kobayashi returned the gesture with a smile.
Her family was utterly terrifying.
Utterly and completely terrifying if they could make her feel so happy so strongly and without limits.
Once they were were walking for a few hours, Tanjirou brought it up:
"I got to restore what your letter says, Aya."
She stopped on her tracks, making Tanjirou give her an estranged look. She had tried to ignore it, she truly had, but not just during their way, but during all the time they had been together. But it was no use, as much as Ayaka tried, Tanjirou just wasn't able to-
"Why are you kind to me?" she questioned while playing with her hands. Somehow she sounded angry, but not completely.
Tanjirou tilted his head, first to one side then to the other like a lost puppy. The morning light made his hair shine on red firey tones. Of all people they could have ever paired her up with, it had to be him and only him, because that was her luck and the universe found amusing seeing her agonize and suffer.
It was so... unfair. Why did it have to be her, of all people? Why did she have to be paired up with the only demon slayer.... the only demon slayer that travelled with who they supposedly had to kill, with a demon?
Everything was too much, such an unfair and excessive too much, that sometimes she wished she would only have to worry about herself in this world, but she'd be too selfish for that, her heart wouldn't let her. She was unable to, because Tanjirou had been right and she hated him. She hated him so much for it that she used that hate to hide any other feelings, because he was the living reminder of her mistakes.
She simply wished to erase her emotions. Was it that hard?
"Why wouldn't I be?" Was Tanjirou's only response, just like that, so simple yet so hard to understand.
Sword fighting was something easier to figure out than Tanjirou Kamado, than her family, than Yuu or than the kids from her village. How she hoped to stick to it and forget everything else.
"Leave me alone, Tanjirou, I'm begging you," Ayaka nearly pleaded with an agonizing voice. "Leave me alone, I don't want you near me, I don't want you to smile at me, nor that you smile at me, not even to look at me."
"But the letter-" he started, but she harshly interrupted him.
"Screw the letter, Tanjirou!" He gave a step back, as if he was scared of her, she wouldn't blame him, it didn't look like the kind of fear you feel when a mother scolds you, it seemed deeper, maybe. She remembered Himejima-shishou's words, she didn't feel blind then, it was clear as crystal. She regretted yelling at him, but she couldn't go back in time. She hugged herself, and continued talking in a softer voice. "If you have a tiny bit of understanding in your body, please, leave me be, okay?"
He looked at her with the only kind of stare she couldn't decipher, maybe she couldn't distinguish what she saw because it was a stare too deep for her to see, maybe that was what Himejima-shishou had meant.
To hell with Himejima-shishou's advice, he didn't know anything.
Ayaka was lucky their shared paths came to a halt, because if not she would have to look at Tanjirou's face, and that felt on that moment more terrifying than fighting against whatever demon that appeared on her way.
"Okay, I'll do what you ask of me, even if I don't like the idea of leaving you alone." Then she caught the smallest glimpse on his stare. He felt sorry for her.
She didn't need any more explanations, that was why he had been so kind, because he felt sorry for her.
That was the only thing left for her anger to grow, like a snowball running down a mountain. She wasn't someone he had to protect, she wasn't someone that needed help.
"Stop looking at me that way! I don't need your pity or your sympathy, you hear? I don't need you at all!" However Tanjirou's stare didn't change, his honest eyes kept having the same feelings, feelings she didn't understand.
«Stay away from me, stay away from me as much as possible, Tanjirou Kamado. Run without looking back and stay as far away from me as you can», Ayaka had wanted to say, but her throat vehemently closed.
A whisper that she couldn't understand came out of his mouth before Tanjirou, finally, turned around on his heels in the opposite direction to continue on his path.
At last, he was going.
Ayaka hugged herself tighter, and she spent a moment looking at Tanjirou's form retreating before following her own path.
Maybe she felt relieved, but she didn't feel any better.
She never got to read Himejima-shishou's letter.
ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ
It was on her way to her third mission that Ayaka met her second personal torment.
Zenitsu Agatsuma, who would follow her for the rest of her life.
The house she had been assigned to was said to be cursed, since in that area hundreds of people have been rumoured to disappear without a trace. At least, that was what her crow had yelled, which appeared to go back to his yelling attitude without Tanjirou.
It was annoying. He had been pressing her about Tanjirou throughout all of her last mission, and she could only ignore his questions about him. If he wasn't doing that, he was yelling at her to go to her next mission, which had caused all that disastrous situation in the first place.
The first time she saw Zenitsu, he had been harassing a girl that appeared to just be passing by, trying to make her get married to him right there for some strange reasoning Ayaka wasn't sure she understood.
In between the girl's yelling, who only wanted to be set free from the grasp of that strange boy, the whining that came from him, who wanted the girl to accept his proposal, and the incessant voice of her crow claiming "go to the house in the south, hurry, hurry!" It wasn't strange that as she tried to get that demon slayer to stop his harassing, Ayaka missed on the tiny detail of the small sparrow flying over their heads, getting together with a fourth person behind them.
"Leave the girl alone, you're giving the demon slayers a bad name!" Ayaka yelled, trying with all her might for Zenitsu Agatsuma, just as he had introduced himself, to abandon his grip on the poor girl and let her go.
"She's going to marry me! She's going to marry me before the demons kill me! I'm not going to die without getting married first!" Zenitsu screamed with a high pitch and an iron grip on the clothes of the unfortunate girl. "You want to stop me because you're jealous that I'm not getting married to you! You've had your eyes on me ever since the Final Selection, I know it, I know it! But she came first so stop it!"
"If you want to get married so badly find someone first that wants to marry you! In what kind of world do you live in!?" Ayaka replied, ignoring the last comments about her.
Suddenly the crow's yelling stopped, and Ayaka stopped tugging on the hair of that strange demon slayer for a moment, with a feeling of deja vu appearing without being called.
With the help of another pair of hands, they could finally manage to get the so called Zenitsu to get off the girl.
"What the hell are you doing in the middle of the road!? Can't you see the girl doesn't want to marry you!? And you're giving troubles to your sparrow too!"
«Tan... jirou?»
He was there, holding Zenitsu by the collar of his uniform as he continued to scold him. He didn't look at her, too busy with his attention on Zenitsu, and Ayaka didn't know if it was because he hadn't realized she was there or because he'd be true to what she asked of him.
"Your uniform! You're the one from the Final Selection, right!" claimed Zenitsu, still hanging from his collar grabbed by Tanjirou's hand.
"I definitely don't know a guy like you! Definitely not!" Tanjirou yelled annoyed.
It didn't seem Zenitsu would accept that as an answer, since he continued moaning and saying they had met, and of course, he got her into the mess.
"We've met, we've really met before!" He pointed at Ayaka, who had done nothing but observe the conflict in bewilderment. "Her too, she can tell you because she remembers me, that's why she wants to marry me, but I can't because the other girl arrived first! And like it's natural I can't marry two women at the same time!"
Tanjirou looked at her, and for the first time, he realized Ayaka was there.
"Aya?" He was nearly as petrified as her, maybe even more. Both of them looked at each other in silence for a moment that lasted too long before Tanjirou's face turned into a very weird one. "Do you seriously wanna marry this guy?"
It had the same effect as a kick to the stomach.
"Of course not! As if something like that could be possible!" she yelled aggravated, suddenly feeling her ears go read in shame.
Incredible, it was all incredible. Why did it have to be her?
Tanjirou let go of Zenitsu, leaving him to fall to the ground in a muffled sound, going over to the girl that had been taking shelter behind Ayaka's back on an attempt to stay as far away as she could from Zenitsu's sticky hands.
Her fingers strongly held onto Ayaka's uniform, expecting her to protect her. She could nearly feel the desperation and nervousness she gave off through her nails, firmly fixed on Ayaka's back.
She'd be scared.
The thought of having a scared girl grab onto her trusting her for protection made Ayaka blush.
"It's okay, you can go home now," Tanjirou announced, making the girl calm down and stop squeezing Ayaka as if her life depended on it.
"But she still has to marry me, she likes me!" continued Zenitsu without rest from the floor.
The girl finally managed to gather enough courage, or she wasn't nearly as scared as Ayaka had believed her to be in the first place, because she slapped Zenitsu with strength proper to someone training under Himejima-shishou's teachings.
Ayaka tried to muffle the chuckles with her hand that her throat would inevitably make, but her snort was still clear to their ears.
"Shame on you!" she started to hit him repeatedly. Meanwhile, Ayaka made no attempt in stopping her, observing the little scene with a funny expression. He deserved it, in a sense, it would be silly to expect the poor girl to leave that incident without a punishment.
Instead, Tanjirou was different as he tried to pull them apart, taking the girl by her waist and getting her away from Zenitsu. Even when she didn't reach to hit him, her arm stayed moving up and down trying to.
Zenitsu had started to loudly cry, but neither the girl nor Ayaka felt any sympathy for him. Naturally, both of them shared the solidarity of being disgusted by him.
"When did I ever say that I liked you!? I only talked to you because I thought you were sick when I saw you squatting on the side of the road!" the girl furiously yelled, as she moved without rest in Tanjirou's arms.
Horror took hold of Zenitsu's features, who seemed to have formed some kind of romanticized scenario and started to feel bad realizing reality wasn't what he thought it was.
"Doesn't that mean you talked to me because you're worried about me because you liked me!?" Big tears bursted from his eyes as he yelled, every word making his voice more and more high pitched.
"That's completely impossible, I have a fiance already!" the girl yelled in fury. "I see you're really energetic, so you should be all right, let's never see each other again!"
And with that, the girl started walking out of there with her head high and fists tightened by her sides, ignoring Zenitsu's yells begging her to come back.
Ayaka grabbed him by the collar of his uniform just like Tanjirou had done before, making sure he couldn't follow the girl. He fought for a few moments until he saw how useless it was, so he started to blame all his misfortune on Tanjirou as Ayaka stared at him, squinting.
"It's your fault I didn't get married, it's all your fault! You've ruined my marriage!"
Tanjirou just gave him a look filled with disgust, one he didn't even give demons.
"Don't look at me like as if I were a monster!" Zenitsu cried again.
The disgust on Tanjirou's face only became worse when Ayaka's eyes joined him, expressing clear repulsion.
"I'm about to die! Don't look at me like that! I'm super weak and don't think I'm exaggerating!" he cried, as he threw himself to hug Ayaka's stomach, making all his tears and snot stick to her uniform. "But you'll marry me, right!? I'm so lucky I'll have a super strong wife that will keep me safe!"
She was too busy with her eyes fixed on the snot on her uniform to hear him, becoming completely still.
Needless to say, Zenitsu Agatsuma got pounded headfirst into the ground after that.
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