Chapter Text
Shinobu was in the closet of her parents bedroom for three days before the slayers found her.
Huddled tightly in the small space filled with clothes after being hastily pushed in and told to 'stay put and don't make a sound' by Kanae, Shinobu did exactly that. Three days she spent in there, wrapped up in the fine silk of her mothers kimono that she only wore for special occasions, petrified that the monster was standing just outside, waiting for her to move, to make a single sound, so it can pounce on her and devour her just like it did her family.
She wasn't an idiot, she knew what happened outside the closet. The stink of blood and rot had seeped its way into her nose, the shrieks and howls of her family still rung in her ears...though the worst was the chewing and crunching sounds that came after the screams had stopped. She resisted the urge to yell, to cry, to vomit, to charge out towards whatever it was killing her family and do something.
Ever the obedient little sister, however, she didn't do a thing. She stayed put and didn't make a sound, just like Kanae told her.
When the closet door is nearly ripped open, she thinks she is finally going to die, that the creature finally grew tired of waiting. She doesn't try and fight or scream, knowing it'd all be futile. She accepts her death.
A giant man stands before her, hulking over her tiny form. Buddhish chanting beads wrapped around him and tears leaking in streams from his blinded eyes, a shudder runs through her at large chained axe held in his hands. She thinks maybe his lack of sight is why it took him so long to come and kill her.
Instead of snatching her up and eating her whole, however, the man simply asks if she is safe, though his voice is thunderous he tries to keep his words soft for the clearly traumatized child.
"Aren't you going to kill me now?"
It seems her words only make his tears flow harder, and the big man's eyebrow furrow in pure sadness and pity for the girl. He reaches his arms out, offering to pick her up. Shinobu doesn't move, she doesn't trust this giant man with a giant weapon.
"I am a part of the demon slayer corps, you can trust me." Despite his almost pleading words, Shinobu hardly moves, so a demon killed her family, and this man was supposed to kill that demon...but he didn't.
"Mama said I shouldn't trust strangers."
She doesn't have much of a choice, even if she can outrun him she's not strong enough to push him away, and so she holds her arms up in defeat, allowing him to pick her up from under her armpits and lift her away from the carnage just outside of the closet. Immediately, before large violet eyes can wander, he pushed her head into his shoulder.
"Please, do not look. I do not wish to further your pain." The big man whispered.
Shinobu was fortunate to only see small glimpses of her slaughtered family, the dried bloodied floors that she and Kanae would play on, a pale hand bent in a horrific shape as it was trying to claw itself away, but she couldn't escape the smell. The room was stuffy, a foul coppery smell that filled her nose and overwhelmed her senses.
She knew what death smelled like now, something she'd never even imagined thinking about.
The giant man takes her outside and places her on the ground with a gentleness she didn't know someone so large could possess. Shinobu stands alone stiffly with her hands clenched into fists at her sides while the big man goes to talk to the strange masked people in the same uniform.
Alone. No sister to make her feel less nervous, no mother to comfort her, no father to protect her. She wants to cry, but the tears simply won't come.
Overhearing his words, her breath catches in her throat as she hears him tell the masked people to take her to the other 'kakushi' since she is orphaned, and that she may have some medical expertise from her slain parents. She doesn't know what that means, she doesn't know who they are. Pale cheeks flush red in anger, if these people were supposed to protect her, where were they three nights ago when her beloved sister and parents were viscously torn apart? How did they know she knew medicines from her parents work? Why did they not find and kill this beast before it killed them?
Shinobu stares at their backs in fury, how dare they want to take and use her so quickly after her losses. If they couldn't protect her family, then she doesn't want to be apart of them at all. Her father always said she was quick, quicker than all of the other children her age. So by the time the giant man turns to collect her, he is only left with the sight of small footprints in the dirt where she was once standing.
Shinobu is already gone.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
As shocking as it is, most people turn a blind eye to a starving girl in the streets.
Shinobu is thirteen now—she thinks? Time has been lost to her for a while. After running from the demon slayers three years ago, she realized quickly she had nowhere to go. At first it was hard, getting used to sleeping on the ground and rough floors instead of her bedding and scraping for food took time to get used to.
As she got older, she found ways to survive. She was smaller than she was supposed to be due to lack of nutrition, so she could often blend into the shadows without being noticed. Sneaking into unoccupied rooms at local Inns for a night or two, bumping into strangers to grab money from their pockets, dining at busy restaurants and running off before they can come collect the bill, by the time she starts getting noticed she's already moved on to the next town. It wasn't an honest living, or an honorable one at that, and she knows that her family would be disappointed if they ever knew...but they won't ever know. She has to remind herself of that a lot, so she doesn't feel as guilty about what she does to survive.
It doesn't always work, however. Sometimes she finds herself in places where there's not enough people to take from their pockets, or the people who run the Inn's are a little too observant of a thirteen year old girl lingering around.
She hasn't eaten in days now, or was it weeks? She can't remember for sure. Her last meal had been a bowl of rice and vegetables that was given to her by an older woman when she was traveling between towns. The older woman was polite and lived quite desolately, her husband had died of an illness years prior and they had no children, so she enjoyed the company. Even if Shinobu's company was almost silent and dry. The woman had offered her a room in exchange for help around her home, but as much as it pained her, Shinobu was gone the next morning.
She thinks she's in Asakusa now.
As she thinks of the ginger tsukudani her mother used to make, her head starts to feel heavy and her vision starts to spin. It's not very smart to not eat for as long as she does, but she couldn't burden the older woman for any longer than a night. Shinobu is afraid if she stays any longer, she'll awake to bloodied walls and the demon from so many years ago finally coming to finish her off.
The lights around her start to blur as she stumbles into the nearest wall, sliding down quite ungracefully till she lays flat against the ground. Her breathing is shallow, and she knows if she had anything in her stomach it would be thrown up due to the nausea she feels, she squeezes her eyes shut to avoid the lights that were making her head pound.
What a terrible way to die. Laid against the dirty ground in a city surrounded by uncaring people, slowly starving until her breaths finally stop. Cold hands suddenly touch her face, and Shinobu tries to flinch away. She doesn't have the strength to do so.
"Please, let me help you." A calm, gentle voice if overheard, and Shinobu opens her eyes.
The beautiful face of a woman, purple eyes much like her own gazing down at her, and Shinobu briefly thinks that she's an angel finally coming to take her to heaven despite her sinful deeds.
"Have I died?" She asks, hoping for it to finally be true.
Her question is answered as an angry little man appears to the beautiful woman's side, a scowl twisted into his features, and Shinobu knows then that she is alive and this is clearly not heaven since he is here. The woman smiles lightly, a giggle that sounds as soft as a feather reaching her ears.
"No, my dear." She says.
The little angry man throws his head around, clearly stressed by some unknown thing. Shinobu thinks she sees fangs as he grits his teeth.
"Lady Tamayo, we must go now." His voice is almost as ugly as his face, Shinobu thinks to herself. The woman doesn't move, shifting to let Shinobu's head rest in her lap.
"Have you bandaged these yourself?" The beautiful mystery woman asks her, fingers skimming the bandages Shinobu had wrapped around her arms from the numerous wounds she received while traveling.
"My parents worked at a hospital before they died." She coughs out, instinctively licking her chapped lips despite her tongue being bone dry. She doesn't know why she said that, she never tells anyone anything about herself. The woman looks determined now, moving to where Shinobu could sit up and wrap her arm around her shoulder.
"Yushiro, help me carry her." She asks the angry, ugly little man.
Despite how annoyed and frustrated he looks, he obeys her quite quickly, much like a dog. Grabbing Shinobu's other arm to lift her up fully. Despite the two of them being small, they have to bend uncomfortably to reach Shinobu's height.
"We should leave her be, let her die here. She isn't our concern, Lady Tamayo." If Shinobu had the strength she'd kick that ugly little man as hard as she could, right where she knows it would hurt.
"She needs our help, Yushiro. Please, help me carry her home before the sun rises." The woman sounds frustrated now, voice rising in volume as they begin to walk somewhere Shinobu doesn't know. She begins to think of a plan, if these people do have good intentions and help her heal, then she'll have to leave as soon as she's able to walk again without blacking out.
They carry her a short bit to a house, not without a bit of struggle though. Inside, she can smell multiple pharmaceutical products and a sweet scent. As soon as they lay her down on a plush bedding, the beautiful woman orders the little man to go get her some food as she brings water to Shinobu's lips.
Her mind keeps her on high alert despite the woman's seemingly pure intentions, even as she nibbles on bites of her salmon and sips her tea. She looks at the woman's almost claw-like nails, and the angry little man's cat-like eyes. Something wasn't right about them, something wasn't quite human.
The woman is fretting around what Shinobu believes is an at home medical lab. Sterilizing needles, organizing certain medications... it distantly reminds Shinobu of her own parents.
"What are you?" Shinobu asks, her voice rising a bit in an accusatory tone.
The woman smiles at her, and Shinobu thinks that she must have children, since she has the same look in her eyes that her mother had. Despite her not trusting her fully, she still hands over her arm for the woman to poke with a needle. Fluids, she said, Shinobu will believe it for now.
"My name is Tamayo. I used to be a doctor, it was years ago before I lost my family, but I still practice when I—"
"No." Shinobu cuts her off, words firm as she stares them both down, "what are you."
She's in a stare down with the two of them, eyes not faltering whatsoever as the Tamayo looks guilt ridden and Yushiro looks agitated.
"I told you we should've just left her to die." Yushiro mumbles, mostly to himself. Shinobu still hears it, and leers at the little man. Shes decided that she will kick him as soon as she has the opportunity.
As she looks over the odd pair again, something clicks in her brain. The eyes, the fangs, the claws...it's all the same things that she heard from the stories of the people who also lost their loved ones...
"You're demons?" Shinobu asks hesitantly, trying to still keep her voice strong.
Without thinking, she grips the chopstick in her hand tighter, knowing she could at least get one good jab in before they try and eat her.
"Unfortunately, we are." Tamayo says, sadness and shame veiling over her voice as her eyes gaze down at the floor. Shinobu tenses, knowing it could all be an act.
"Though, we do not eat humans. Nor do we hurt them. We survive on donated blood." Shinobu raises an eyebrow, still not fully trusting her. “Please, let me explain everything.”
Shinobu lets her, because she has to. She can’t move, nor can she defend herself. Tamayo tells her everything, how she was turned into a demon, who the King of demons is, and her plan to defeat him. Perhaps it’s the aura of the woman calming her down, or her own vengeance telling her to help her cause, but Shinobu slowly starts to trust Tamayo.
It takes Shinobu longer than she would like to heal herself, but she doesn't mind as much, because she finds herself wanting to stay.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
She's seventeen when Tamayo allows her to go on her first mission alone.
After she'd been taken in and allowed herself to finally stay somewhere, Tamayo had become a mother figure to Shinobu. Their similarities were not easy to ignore, their black hair and purple eyes let them pass as mother and daughter. She had confirmed Shinobu's thoughts and told her how she once was a mother and a wife before being turned into a demon. Yushiro was her patient years later, and she had turned him after he was dying of illness.
Despite her initial distrust of the two, Shinobu had become quite comfortable with her little found family. Tamayo taught Shinobu throughout the years, pharmaceuticals and medicines, the history of demons, and how she believes she can make a cure for demonism. Shinobu promised to help her, and since then the three had been working together.
"Shinobu, promise me you'll be careful?" Tamayo asks as she brushes down Shinobu's hair, her other hand twiddling with her kimono. She's anxious, clearly.
The blue spider lily was rare, so rare that it was a myth to most, only few in the world had seen it, but it's a crucial ingredient for their next experiment to cure demonism. Tamayo and Yushiro could only look for it at night when it didn’t bloom, and took far longer to travel, but Shinobu could go anytime and search in the sunlight. She volunteered enthusiastically one night to go look for the flower after Tamayo's last experiment failed and there was a rumor that some had sprouted in the mountains not far from them, soon to be blooming.
"Of course! I'll be sure to stay safe, at risk of running into something as ugly as Yushiro!" Shinobu says cheerfully, hand covering her lips to hide her coy smile.
Speaking of Yushiro, he jumps up in anger at her words, flailing his arms as if he were going to fight her. Shinobu giggles at his reaction.
"Why you little—!" He yells, voice shrill enough to break glass.
"Yushiro, please. Shinobu is only teasing." Tamayo says, and obedient as ever, Yushiro calms down. Placing his hands in front of him like a scolded child. "Of course, Lady Tamayo. I apologize."
"You do remember what you're looking for, yes?" Shinobu nods at Tamayo's question, the notes in her bag explain everything she'd ever need to know.
"Yes, of course. I won't let you down. Now, please head inside before the sun rises."
Adjusting her belongings, she embraces Tamayo deeply. She knows this will keep her away for a long bit of time, and her found family will be missed dearly. Even Yushiro will be missed, as much as she loathes to admit that to herself. As she starts to walk away from their home, Shinobu spins gracefully on the tips of her toes to face them one last time before bolting away.
"And please keep that dreadful beast Chachamaru away from Fugu!"
She distantly hears Yushiro's yell of anger.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
It doesn't take long for Shinobu to reach the mountains that the rumor had said. They were desolate mountains, only small homes nearby that were spread out with fairly reclusive people. By the time she reaches the snow that covered the tops like blankets, nightfall approaches.
Plopping down on a boulder not covered by the snow, Shinobu reaches for her notes, she knows that she won't find the flower for hours as they only bloom during daytime, but it doesn't hurt to study.
A twig snaps above her, breaking the silence that she had become entranced with. Her head snaps up in surprise, and she's met with an unholy sight.
It's so ugly she has trouble even looking at it. Scaley green skin, yellowed eyes, and four arms. It smacks its wet lips together loudly, sharp protruding teeth looking all the more dangerous.
"Oh yes, you'll be a lovely meal."
Shinobu thinks it laughs after its words, but it sounds so ugly it could've been choking from spit caught in its throat.
"I don't eat much in these mountains, but it's all worth it when a delicious girl like you stumbles upon my path." The demon claps its hands together loudly, rubbing them like a fly who found rotten food. Her lip rises in disgust, hand reaching for the small poison coated blade at her side.
"What will you taste like? Will this be the first time a man has been inside of you?" Ok, now she knows it's laughing. Of course a male demon would try and make her death as perverse as possible. Shinobu steps back firmly as the demon finally jumps down from his spot on the branches.
"Stay back." She demands, pulling out her small nichirin knife gifted to her by a slayer she met months ago and held a fondness for. The demon barks out a laugh at the blade, and Shinobu resists the urge to smile as he's unaware of the wisteria coating it.
"Oh, I love it when they fight. It makes it all the more worth it to taste that sweet flesh." The demon pounces after his words, like a cat jumping to catch a mouse.
Shinobu has always been fast, and it's no different now as she dodges each strike the demon takes at her with its claws. She knows her defense will only last so long though, and she'll soon have to start striking back with her blade. After ducking as the demons left arm tries to swipe through her head, Shinobu reaches out and slices its gut. A long, open cut along its stomach.
Feeling victory only for a moment, as one of its claws snags her and rips through the skin of her thigh. She cries out in pain as droplets of her blood bounce off of the snow, pleading to the Gods that the poison that was on her blade will work fast.
Not fast enough, apparently, as her wound makes her falter and its claws catch her again this time on her calf and then somewhere on her torso. She stabs at the demons scaley hands each time he reaches out towards her jumping back form. She knows the poison will work, it's always worked before, so why is it taking so long?
It seems the only way of survival now is to run to safety before she is eaten or she bleeds out. As quickly as she can in the snow and with her wounds, she bolts into the trees. She doesn't hear the demon behind her any longer, but she can spare to turn around and look in case he is.
She's bleeding, but she doesn't know from where. It's hard to breathe in the coldness of the mountains, and the blood leaking from her body doesn't help it. She hadn't felt this weak in years, and she hates it. Falling to her hands and knees as blood continues to seep through her clothes, tears also leak through her eyes.
Shinobu doesn't want to die failing Tamayo, she doesn't want to die not avenging her family. It seems she will though, so she turns to lay on her back. Her vision blurs as she fights to keep her eyes open, at least the stars will be a good sight to see before her death.
A shadowy figure descends above her, and she sees a swirl of rainbow colors, before Shinobu finally closes her eyes.