Chapter 100: Shinazugawa Sanemi
Akira was momentarily stunned by the furious shout that erupted from below. 'So this really is him,'he thought, a flicker of recognition passing through him.'That hot-headed guy.'
Before he could respond, the demon hanging suspended in mid-air decided to add its own commentary.
"Hehe, another one looking for a quick death," it rasped, its voice a dry crackle. "Just you wait, kid. Once I break free from this damned rope, I'll devour you both! But... if you let me down now, I might just consider letting you live."
"Is that so?"
Akira's calm voice drifted down from above. The white-haired boy on the ground below snapped his head up, his eyes widening in shock. He hadn't even seen Akira move, let alone ascend into the high branches of the tree.
"Of course it's true, you—" The demon, believing its crude lie had worked, began to spin its tale, only to be cut off by a sharp cry from the boy who had strung it up.
"Wait! Don't!"
Thwip—
With a single, fluid strike, Akira severed the rope. The demon, caught completely by surprise, plummeted downwards and kissed the earth with a sickening thud.
The boy on the ground let out a furious snarl, preparing to rush forward and restrain the demon again while its legs were still bound. But before he could take a step, Akira descended from the sky like a falling leaf. In his hand was the thick branch he had sliced off along with the rope. With a brutal, efficient motion, he drove the sharpened point straight through the demon's throat, pinning it to the ground and silencing its pained gurgles.
He didn't stop there. In a blur of movement, he cut several more branches, using them as crude stakes to impale the demon's limbs, pinning its thrashing body firmly to the forest floor.
The creature struggled in agony, its head buried in the mud as it tried to lift itself, but Akira's foot came down hard on the back of its neck, grinding its face deeper into the dirt.
"There," Akira said, his voice even. "Is it quiet enough now?"
"You..." The white-haired boy stared, watching how Akira had subdued the demon in the blink of an eye. He swallowed hard, a knot of apprehension and awe tightening in his throat.
"My name is Kanzaki Akira," Akira said, turning to face him. "What's yours?"
After a brief, guarded hesitation, the boy answered. "Shinazugawa Sanemi."
"Shinazugawa," Akira began, his tone shifting to one of business. "How about we make a deal?"
"What kind of deal?" Sanemi asked, his brow furrowing in confusion. His family had been shattered by demons long ago. The very clothes on his back were tattered and worn. He glanced at Akira's clean, well-made uniform—it was obviously not cheap. Sanemi couldn't imagine possessing anything this man would possibly want.
"You give me your spoils of war—this thing here," Akira said, gesturing to the pinned demon with his chin. "In exchange, I'll show you a way to kill these creatures that doesn't involve waiting for the sun. How does that sound?"
"Why should I believe you?" Sanemi shot back, his suspicion plain.
"Fair enough. I'll give you a live demonstration," Akira replied with a shrug. In front of Sanemi's watchful eyes, he produced a small bundle from his robes. It contained a syringe and several vials of poison, carefully prepared by Kochou Shinobu.
Under Sanemi's intense gaze, Akira knelt and injected the contents of one vial into the demon squirming beneath his foot.
The effect was immediate and horrifying. Within a few short breaths, the flesh around the injection site began to bubble and fester, a wave of necrotic decay spreading rapidly across the demon's entire body. A few seconds later, its struggles ceased. It dissolved into dust, leaving nothing behind but the crude wooden stakes.
Witnessing the entire process, Sanemi's breath caught in his throat. For him, a faster, more certain method of killing demons was an unbelievably attractive proposition.
"What is that?" he demanded, his voice tight with a mixture of shock and desperate hope.
"A poison developed specifically for demons—for monsters like the one we just dealt with," Akira explained, calmly taking notes on the poison's effective time and performance in his small journal.
"Where can I get it?" Sanemi asked, his words tumbling out in a rush.
"The Demon Slayer Corps," Akira answered. "It's an organization dedicated to hunting demons. They don't just have poisons that can kill them; they have special weapons that can kill them by decapitation, and Breathing Techniques that strengthen the human body, giving people the power to fight on even terms."
He looked Sanemi directly in the eye. "So, are you interested in joining?"
After asking the question, Akira felt a strange sense of déjà vu. He was starting to feel like an HR recruiter for the Demon Slayer Corps. Over a year ago, he had brought the Kocho sisters into the fold. In doing so, the Corps had gained not only two highly skilled doctors and a head nurse with exceptional management skills, but also a powerful Hashira.
Now, here he was, personally inviting the man who would become the future Wind Hashira.
'Looking at it this way, I'm not just any recruiter,'he mused.'I'm the ace.'A dry thought followed.'I should ask Kagaya for a raise.'Then he remembered.'Right. A Hashira's salary is already at the 'unlimited resources' level.'
"Can I... really join?" Sanemi's voice was hesitant, laced with a vulnerability that contrasted sharply with his earlier aggression.
"Of course," Akira affirmed. "The Demon Slayer Corps welcomes anyone with the determination to kill demons. Especially someone like you, who can already hunt them without any specialized training. You're a rare talent."
"This..." Sanemi wavered for a moment, his gaze dropping to the ground where the demon had just disintegrated. Finally, he looked up, his eyes filled with a new, steely resolve. "Alright. I'll join."
He didn't suspect Akira of lying. The medicine that could melt a demon into nothing was all the proof he needed.
"Welcome to the Demon Slayer Corps," Akira said with a small, genuine smile.
"Yeah," Sanemi grunted in reply.
Afterward, Akira followed Sanemi back to the dilapidated shack he called home. He needed a place to stay for the night anyway, and it gave him an opportunity to send a message to the nearest Kakushi outpost to arrange for Sanemi's transport and induction.
The next day, after the black-clad members of the Kakushi had arrived and taken a quiet, resolute Sanemi with them, Akira continued on his journey.
...
As he walked, Akira's thoughts drifted to the tragic history of the boy he had just recruited. Shinazugawa Sanemi had been born into an ordinary family, the eldest of several siblings. But his home life was far from wonderful. His father was a cruel, abusive man who frequently beat him and his mother, who often threw herself in the way to protect her children.
After this so-called "father," a man with a long list of misdeeds, was finally killed by one of his many enemies, Sanemi made a promise with his younger brother, Genya. Together, they would protect their mother and their other siblings.
Then came the night their mother went out and didn't return. Worried, Sanemi left Genya in charge of the house and went to find her. When he finally returned, he was met with a scene of pure horror: a monster was attacking his siblings inside their home.
To protect what was left of his family, he threw himself at the creature, fighting with desperate ferocity.
In the chaos of the dark night, Genya was knocked unconscious. The rest of their siblings were slaughtered. Sanemi himself was grievously injured. But in that moment of desperation, his unique constitution came into play. His blood was Marechi—a rare and potent type that was intoxicatingly attractive to demons. Even a mere whiff of it could send a lesser demon into a drunken, disoriented state.
Relying on this strange trait, he managed to fight and stall the monster until the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon.
But as the darkness receded, he saw the truth. The monster he had fought all night, the creature that had murdered his family, was his own mother, twisted and transformed into a demon. As her form dissipated into ash under the morning sun, Sanemi's world shattered.
It was then that the unconscious Genya awoke. Seeing his blood-soaked older brother standing over the spot where their mother was disintegrating, the young, traumatized boy could only come to one conclusion. He screamed, his voice filled with grief and rage, denouncing Sanemi as a "murderer."
Faced with his mother's horrifying death and the bitter accusations of the only brother he had left, Sanemi chose to walk away. He left everything behind and began a solitary, brutal path as a demon hunter.
...
Recalling Sanemi's past, Akira paused on his journey. He found a quiet spot to write a letter to Kagaya, detailing his successful recruitment. In the letter, he also made a special request: for the Corps to help him find Sanemi's younger brother, Shinazugawa Genya.
Akira remembered him from the story—the boy with no talent for Breathing Techniques who still, through sheer force of will and his own special constitution, carved out a place for himself on the path of a demon slayer.
If there was a chance, Akira wanted to try. He wanted to help these two brothers, bound by such an ill-fated destiny, reconcile before it was too late. He hoped to prevent the original tragedy, where Sanemi only revealed his true, protective love for his brother while watching him die in his arms.
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