Chapter Text
Kyojuro usually makes an attempt to come home before eight so he has time to eat and rest before he’s dispatched on a mission.
Usually, his attempts go awry. Like today, because his watch reads nine-fifty-seven. Mostly because grading papers had taken a bulk of his time, and then an old lady had asked him for directions and he had resolved to walk her home because it was far too late and dark for her to navigate on her own.
Now, with approximately two hours to eat and nap, Kyojuro knows he’s going to be exhausted the next day. And it’s only Wednesday.
Kyojuro is fumbling with his keys through the main door of his apartment when he sees the pink-haired man standing in front of the building.
He’s clutching a cardboard box in his arms. The mid-November weather is chilly enough to bite, but he’s wearing a short sleeved t-shirt, staring at the door of the apartment building like he’s going to open it by glaring.
“Hello!” Kyojuro greets. “Are you lost?”
The man turns to look at him. He doesn’t look very old—definitely not anywhere over twenty, Kyojuro thinks—with bright yellow eyes framed with long pink lashes. He blinks owlishly at Kyojuro, then tilts his head.
“Hello,” he echoes back. His voice is a pleasant tenor, and his previous glare directed at the door has all but disappeared when he smiles lightly at Kyojuro instead, the corner of his lips tugging up. “Would you happen to know which one is building number twelve?”
Kyojuro points at the door. “This one! Are you moving in?”
The man nods. “You live here?”
“I do!” Kyojuro shifts his folders to his right hand. “Do you need any help carrying anything?”
“Oh, no.” He laughs lightly, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He lifts the box slightly. “This is the only thing I have. The rest of my stuff hasn’t arrived yet.”
Kyojuro gestures at the door. “What floor are you moving into?”
“Third floor.”
“Oh,” Kyojuro replies, the realization sinking in. Then he smiles back at him. “You’re my new neighbor, then!”
“Lucky coincidence, huh?” He hoists the box to tuck under his left arm so he can stick out his right. “I’m Akaza. Nice to meet you…?”
“Rengoku Kyojuro!” Kyojuro takes his hand.
Akaza has a surprisingly firm grip. “Kyojuro,” he echoes slowly, like he’s tasting Kyojuro’s name for the first time.
Kyojuro continues smiling at him, even though he’s trying to figure out why Akaza seemed to have only given him his first name, and is also insistent on calling him Kyojuro when they’ve just met.
But—well. Everyone has their eccentricities, and given what Kyojuro will be doing in approximately two hours tonight, he isn’t one to judge.
“Let’s go inside, Akaza!” he exclaims. “You might catch a cold if you stand outside wearing so little for too long.”
“Oh,” Akaza laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I have a strong immune system.”
Still, he follows close behind Kyojuro as he mounts the steps and tugs open the door.
The building isn’t exactly the fanciest place. The rent is decent, there usually aren’t many issues with plumbing and electricity, and it’s close to the school. The Demon Slayer Corps headquarters aren’t very far either. The one downside is that Senjuro and his father live on the other side of the city, and Kyojuro can only visit them on the weekends when he isn’t swamped with missions.
Then again, it’s not like Rengoku Shinjuro’s particularly enthusiastic about his visits either.
“It’s nice to have a neighbor!” Kyojuro calls over his shoulder to Akaza. “I’ve been the only one on the floor for quite some time!”
“Glad my neighbor’s so friendly,” Akaza replies in that lilt of his. “Have you been living here for a long time, Kyojuro?”
They reach the third floor. Kyojuro holds open the door for Akaza in case his hands are full, but he doesn’t seem to need it because he’s carrying his box easily with just an arm. Now that they’re inside in a brighter environment, Kyojuro realizes that Akaza has dark blue tattoos looping around his neck, then peeking out of his sleeve and traveling down his arm. “I moved in six months ago!” Kyojuro tells him. “It’s a pretty good building, and convenient too. There’s a grocery store just two blocks away, and the bus stop is just down the street.”
“Ah,” Akaza hums. “That does sound rather convenient.”
They arrive in front of the doors. Akaza’s apartment is directly across from Kyojuro’s, reading: 302. It’s been uninhabited for the six months that Kyojuro’s been living here, and he thinks it’ll be nice to have another presence there.
“What do you do, Akaza?” Kyojuro asks. “Or—are you a student?”
Akaza’s currently fiddling with his keys. There’s a couple moments of silence before he looks back at Kyojuro. “Sorry, I was a bit distracted,” he says. “What did you say again?”
“It’s okay! I was asking what you do for a living. Or if you’re a student?”
“I’m a—” He jabs his keys into the lock. There’s a slight pause as Akaza wrestles with the door, and Kyojuro waits curiously for his reply. “I’m a nurse.”
The door finally swings open. “A nurse,” Kyojuro echoes. “That’s really amazing! My younger brother wants to go into nursing too.” As a kakushi, he thinks, but that’s not really something he can add. A nurse isn’t the first thing that Kyojuro would’ve guessed, seeing Akaza at first glance, but it’s a pleasant surprise.
“Yeah?” Akaza echoes. He shifts his weight. “Well, it’s… it’s a good career. What do you do, Kyojuro?”
“I’m a high school history teacher!”
Akaza raises an eyebrow, gaze flickering over Kyojuro before their eyes meet again. He’s still wearing his teaching uniform, and he’s holding all of the unmarked papers in the folder in his hand.
“That makes sense,” Akaza says slowly, as if it doesn’t make sense. But his tone shifts again, so quickly that Kyojuro thinks he must have imagined it. “You must really like working with kids, then?”
“More like teenagers,” Kyojuro replies. “But yes! I do love my job.”
In his pocket, his phone buzzes, and Kyojuro is reminded of the fact that he still needs to eat dinner and hopefully sleep for half an hour before he needs to leave for the mission. He smiles at Akaza. “It was nice meeting you, Akaza! I’m afraid I’m a bit busy tonight, but if there’s anything you need, feel free to knock on my door! I’d love to help.”
Akaza returns the smile, eyes glinting. “I might take you up on that offer, Kyojuro,” he replies languidly. “See you around.”
He slips inside the apartment with his one box of belongings, dressed too thinly for the November bite, saying Kyojuro’s name as if they’ve known each other for a lifetime.
What a strange person Akaza is, Kyojuro thinks. But he doesn’t seem to be a bad one, and having a neighbor seems nice. Even if it means he has to be more careful when he’s leaving for missions. The one time he had almost been caught coming home with demon blood all over him was by the old lady upstairs, and between her failing eyesight and memory, Kyojuro had gotten away with it. He has a feeling Akaza would be harder to trick.
But that’s a problem for another day. Kyojuro slips inside his apartment and heads off to prepare himself the worst dinner known to mankind (because six months of living alone and he still can’t cook without Senjuro’s help). He may be a Hashira, but the quality of swordsmanship has nothing to do with everyday skills, it seems.
Then, hopefully, he’ll be able to get just a bit of shut-eye before he has to hunt the demon.
***
Rengoku Kyojuro is a piece of work. A freak of nature. He makes absolutely no sense.
Akaza sets down his box onto the ground and stares at his closed door, where across the hall and through one more door Kyojuro must be.
Even with his human form muting the full extent of his demon powers, he can tell the way Kyojuro’s fighting spirit blazes. Bright like fire, intoxicatingly strong, red and orange and gold.
And he’s a teacher. A fucking high school history teacher.
It makes no sense.
Most people’s fighting spirits are dull. Akaza’s learned to avoid crowds because it irritates him seeing the bland flicker, most barely even coloured. Some individuals have stronger fighting spirits depending on personality, on training, on their line of work. But for the most part, the general population is nothing special. Even many demon slayers he’s encountered throughout the centuries don’t have anything worth remembering.
He can’t understand why Kyojuro’s is so strong and bright. There must be something , Akaza reasons, but he can’t figure out what. Kyojuro seems to be the straightforward type, with that ridiculously bright smile always on his face, each sentence genuine and enthusiastic. He has an appearance to match every bit of the personality and fighting spirit, from gold-drenched red hair and dual-toned eyes. And he’s a teacher?
Something about this feels like a fever dream. Maybe the hunger is getting to him. He hasn’t eaten in some time.
And a nurse—he had told Kyojuro he was a fucking nurse! Akaza wants to laugh, remembering Kyojuro’s expression when he mentioned his younger brother also wanting to become a nurse. He had scrambled to think of a profession that would make sense, and nursing had been the first thing that came to mind. Akaza wonders what Kyojuro would think if he found out Akaza was better at ripping people apart than stitching them back together.
Well. It’s not as if Kyojuro will ever find out.
With a short sigh, Akaza toes his box further into the apartment. When Muzan-sama had announced he was moving his base of operations to Tokyo and all of the Kizuki were to follow, Akaza had been against it—not that he dared to voice his opinion. Daki and Gyutaro were already in Tokyo, so it didn’t matter to them. Kokushibo had received the news with his usual lack of emotion, while Douma had grabbed Akaza’s shoulders and beamed at him with that faux-excitement of his, exclaiming how beautiful and delicious Tokyo women were going to be. Then he promptly lost half of his head as Akaza shoved Douma off him.
But at the end of the day, it wasn’t as if any of them had a say, happy or not. Muzan-sama’s word was law, and they all knew better than to disobey. So Akaza had scouted out a small apartment further from the bustle of the city, made sure he was on a low level so that all the higher buildings would block out any direct sunlight, and resigned himself to the misery of having to keep up a disguise in a city as large as Tokyo.
He aches to fight, to feel skin and bone break under his fists and blood splatter over him. To feel the rush of adrenaline against a strong opponent, to not have to think about anything else but the trading of blows, of winning, of getting stronger.
Instead, here he is in this drab apartment, where he can see spiderwebs in the corner of walls and dust layered on the counters and ground. It had been labeled as partially furnished; there is a round dinner table that looks as if it’ll teeter if Akaza bumps against it; in the tiny living room, a dirty couch sits. The bathroom light flickers dangerously. As he turns down the hall to peer at his new bedroom, Akaza sees an empty bed frame with two of the six supporting racks broken.
He sets his box down on the drawer next to his bed. It seems to be the most intact piece of furniture left in this apartment.
There’s nothing much in the box, except three sets of clothing and the documents Kokushibo had forged for all of them. Soyama Akaza, it reads. 20 years old. Born on June eighteenth. And now, as of five minutes ago, apparently a nurse.
What a funny set of lies.
For a couple of moments, Akaza stands still in the middle of the room, surveying it for the second time. Cold has never bothered him, but objectively speaking, this room seems to have quite a low temperature. Perhaps the heating is broken.
Something stirs in his chest; a discomfort. Akaza doesn’t want to call this place home , because it’s not. With the broken furniture and cobwebs and dust that rises under his steps, it seems no better than the caves he used to camp out the day in. He doesn’t like the idea of home, either. Why stay in one place, when he could go anywhere he wanted? He’s not human; he doesn’t need a home to return to at the end of a long day. Just a shelter from the sun.
The discomfort doesn’t leave. It’s probably this mess, Akaza thinks. It makes him irate, and he supposes he’ll spend the day cleaning up. Even if this is just a temporary shelter, he would rather his surroundings neat.
He’s hungry, too, which definitely contributes to the feeling of agitation. He’ll have to hunt tonight. That’ll probably make him feel better. Then he can tidy the place up after picking up some cleaning supplies at the store Kyojuro mentioned.
Akaza leaves the room to head into the kitchen, already disliking Muzan’s plan of moving all the Kizuki to Tokyo.
The only thing remotely interesting about this entire change is that perhaps he’ll encounter a Hashira now that they’re in Tokyo, closer to the Demon Slayer Corps’ headquarters. Maybe there’ll finally be someone to give Akaza a good fight. Feel skin and muscle and bone breaking under his fists, to ruin over and over and over. It’s been far too long since he’s had a satisfying fight. Killing to satiate his hunger has never been the same as fighting a strong opponent.
And of course there’s also the mystery of his next-door neighbor and his absolutely brilliant fighting spirit. Akaza absentmindedly entertains the thought of Kyojuro becoming a demon. Refine that fighting spirit of his, because if it’s so bright, Kyojuro must be full of boundless potential. He wonders what Kyojuro would say if he ever made that offer out of the blue. Akaza has never tried on anyone other than Hashira, and they’d all turned him down.
“Rengoku Kyojuro,” Akaza muses aloud to himself.
A strangely fitting name, matching Kyojuro’s sunrise colors. Akaza wants to know more. He has to. He can’t just leave Kyojuro like that, wasting his potential, when he could be so much more. He could be perfect.
Even as he slips out of the apartment to hunt, gold and red linger in the back of Akaza’s mind.
***
Kyojuro makes it home at three thirty in the morning, and he manages to change out of his corps uniform before collapsing on the couch and passing out.
His alarm rudely awakens him two and a half hours later.
Kyojuro’s learned the mistake of hitting the snooze button once, and he refuses to make it again. His entire body feels sore, and he isn’t sure if it’s from the fight with the demon or from the questionable position he’d ended up falling asleep in. On the ground, his uniform lies. He’d left his mask on the table, and, carefully, Kyojuro stores the two away in the back of his closet.
Coffee is one thing Kyojuro can make, so he resolves to brew himself a very strong cup of it.
Fifteen minutes later, with a quick breakfast and two cups of coffee downed, Kyojuro feels much more awake. There isn’t too much he needs to bring; just the papers he hadn’t gotten the chance to mark, the earpieces Oyakata-sama has given all of them for emergencies, and a bottle of water.
Senjuro used to pack him lunches, back when Kyojuro still lived at home. Now, Kyojuro’s bag is always lighter because he gets his food from the cafeteria.
He’s slipping out the door at six thirty, earlier than the sun, yet late enough that he’s cutting it close to getting to the school on time. Kyojuro reaches for the doorknob of the staircase, but before he can tug it open, the door swings out on its own.
He does a double take. No one comes to this floor except him—
—and his new neighbor, because he has one now.
Akaza is carrying a cardboard box again, but this time it’s filled to the brim with what looks like miscellaneous cleaning supplies. He stops short when he sees Kyojuro, although he doesn’t look as surprised as Kyojuro had been.
“Good morning!” Kyojuro greets, smiling at him. “You’re up very early, Akaza!”
Behind his mountain of cleaning supplies, he can see the corners of Akaza’s lips pull into a smile. “You are too, Kyojuro.”
“I must be at the school at seven!”
“I see,” Akaza says. “I’m usually on the night shift, so I had some trouble falling asleep at this time. Thought I’d go get supplies in the meantime.” He gestures to his box.
That makes a lot of sense. Kyojuro has an official day shift at the school and then an unofficial night shift hunting demons, which results in him being ready to fall asleep at any given moment, if the chance is there.
He’s become familiar with exhaustion, though, so he doesn’t quite mind.
“I hope the move-in has been easy for you,” Kyojuro tells him. “I often come home quite late because of work, but on the weekends, I would love to help you with anything you’d need.”
Akaza’s eyes are bright, never leaving his. It’s a pleasant surprise, Kyojuro thinks, because most people don’t hold his gaze for very long. “Thank you,” Akaza says. “It’s welcoming to have such a helpful neighbor.” He tilts his head. Something about his expression is unreadable, and Kyojuro absentmindedly realizes that Akaza is once again only wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt despite the cold temperature. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you though, Kyojuro.”
“Don’t worry! It won’t be any trouble at all.”
For a moment, neither of them speaks. Then, Akaza starts, “Kyojuro.”
He pauses, silence lingering after Kyojuro’s name. There is an incompleteness following it, telling of another sentence that is yet to be said.
“Yes?”
Akaza blinks, then shakes his head. “It’s nothing. I don’t want to hold you up for work. I’ll see you soon, Kyojuro.”
He brushes past Kyojuro with a wave and a lingering smile. Kyojuro stands still at the entryway of the stairs until he hears the click of Akaza’s door shut behind him.
There’s something about the man that he can’t exactly pinpoint. Has he seen Akaza before? That doesn’t seem right; Kyojuro feels as if he’d remember if he had, for someone as distinctive and unique as Akaza with his pink hair and yellow eyes and tattoos around his neck and arms. Perhaps Akaza is a bit odd in his mannerisms, but there’s nothing particularly malicious about him that Kyojuro can sense.
Then he realizes that it’s already six thirty-five, and Kyojuro promptly forgets all about his confusion regarding Akaza in favor of running down the stairs so he won’t be late again.
***
Kyojuro arrives to class before his students do. That’s one good thing.
He exchanges conversations with the students as they file in. A few inquire about their papers that Kyojuro meant to hand back today, and he laughs and apologizes for the delay. It’s when the bell has sounded and the class is settled down that he realizes that someone’s missing.
Kamado Tanjiro’s typical, “Good morning, Rengoku-sensei!” that he delivers each day, loud and without fail, isn’t to be heard. His seat at the very front of the class is also empty.
Kyojuro frowns. Kamado has never been absent before, not even once. He supposes the administrative staff will tell him a reason or contact his family later on, so Kyojuro marks Kamado down as absent.
The rest of the class goes smoothly. Despite the workload, Kyojuro enjoys teaching. It’s mundane enough to take his mind off demon slaying and the responsibilities that come with that, and he likes interacting with his students, even if he still sometimes mixes their names up. There is a semblance of normalcy that comes with it.
Sometimes the thought creeps in that if he’s ever killed on a mission no one in the school will probably get to know what really happened to him, but Kyojuro doesn’t like to dwell on such what-ifs.
There’s no class during the second period for him to teach, so Kyojuro heads to the staff room, intent on finishing marking the papers he hadn’t been able to look at the night before.
When he gets inside, the entire staff room is abuzz. Kyojuro pauses at the doorway, confused why it’s so loud and why half the staff is gathered around the desk of the administrative assistant. Endo, the literature teacher for the second and third years, spots him.
“Rengoku-kun!” he calls, waving him over. “Have you heard? That boy’s in one of your classes, right?”
Very much lost, Kyojuro heads over as prompted, shaking his head. “I haven’t!” he exclaims. “What’s happening?”
“Oh!” Nomura lifts her head from her monitor to look at Kyojuro. “Rengoku-san, it’s horrible! You really haven’t heard?”
A couple people move aside so that Kyojuro can also look at whatever they’re all whispering about.
He blinks. On Nomura’s screen, she has a news article pulled up. At first glance, he can already tell that it’s a pretty gruesome murder scene—the pictures are censored, but the sheer amount of red is a familiar sight to Kyojuro.
It’s a bloodbath, one that is indicative of demons. The pattern of blood requires a supernatural strength to create. Kyojuro swallows thickly.
He’s seen this story many times, even if the sheer horror of it never quite fades. Kyojuro swallows again, trying to find his voice.
“That’s horrific,” he manages out calmly, because even now, Kyojuro knows he can’t afford to let grief and anger overtake him. He may not be in uniform, but he’s still a Hashira.
“They say he’s the prime suspect,” Nomura wails. “It seems so impossible, right? Kamado-kun is always so polite and sweet when I see him!”
Kyojuro freezes.
“Kamado-kun?” he finally echoes.
“That’s his family,” one of the other teachers behind Kyojuro explains at last. “His mother and four of his younger siblings were all proclaimed dead when they were found. Kamado-kun and his younger sister are missing, but I heard eye-witnesses say that he was seen running from the apartment carrying her.”
It’s then that Kyojuro realizes that the horror he had felt looking at the pictures initially, ignorant of the full story, had been nothing.
Kamado Tanjiro. The bright, inquisitive child at the front of his class who helps his classmates at the expense of his own time and greets Kyojuro without fail every morning.
Kamado couldn’t have killed his family. Not unless… he’d been turned into a demon. Or perhaps it was a demon who had killed his family, and Kamado and his sister had somehow been spared—otherwise, it makes no sense that Kamado would’ve left one sibling alive and killed the rest.
Kyojuro has seen countless deaths and heard of numerous tragedies. Comrades have died in front of his eyes. But here—at this small unpopular high school at the outskirts of Tokyo—here, demons have never bled into this aspect of his life.
He breathes in slowly, then out.
“Excuse me!” he says to the group that has formed around the desk.
“Rengoku-san?” Nomura looks up from the computer screen. “Where are you going?”
Kyojuro still manages to smile at her. Then he realizes that this may not be the right moment to smile. “I need to make a call!” he explains. “I will be right back!”
As the chatter picks up behind him again, Kyojuro can’t help but wish for silence, for a moment to grieve.
But time doesn’t stop for anybody, and this he knows. He cannot focus on the what-ifs of a tragedy that has already happened; the only thing he can do is move forward and try to prevent another one from repeating.
Oyakata-sama must be informed about Kamado’s family if he hasn’t already yet. If the boy is a demon, the best thing Kyojuro can do is give his student a quick death. And if he isn’t…
Well. Most demon slayers are long-time acquaintances with loss anyway.