"Tanjiro..."
Aoi's voice was raspy, still carrying the lingering haze of the illusion she'd just escaped. She leaned against a seat, staggering slightly before regaining her footing. Her eyes swept across the carriage, immediately landing on Tanjiro—who was standing protectively in front of Nezuko—and the strange ropes still connecting the wrists of the sleeping Zenitsu and Inosuke to several strangers.
"Aoi-chan!"
"Aoi-chan, you're awake!" Tanjiro looked at her with pure, unadulterated relief.
"Yeah," Aoi nodded, pressing a hand to her throbbing temple.
Hearing her voice, Nezuko peeked out from behind Tanjiro. Her ruby-red eyes sparkled as she looked at Aoi, and she gave a small, enthusiastic wave. A faint, crimson shimmer flickered in her palm for a split second, as if she were proudly saying, "See? I protected you!"
Seeing Nezuko's adorable expression warmed Aoi's heart. She reached out and gently ruffled the girl's hair. "Thank you, Nezuko."
Suddenly, an attack lunged at Aoi from behind. She twisted her body in a sharp dodge, caught her assailant's wrist, and sent the person crashing to the floor with a clean shoulder throw.
The attacker hit the floorboards with a dull thud. Her disheveled hair fell away to reveal a face that was pale and twisted with desperation.
"Why are you attacking me?" Aoi demanded, staring her down.
"Are they being controlled by the demon?" Tanjiro asked, his voice laced with hesitation.
The girl struggled to push herself up, glaring at Aoi and Tanjiro with pure resentment. "Why couldn't you just die in the dream?! Because of you, I can't have my beautiful dream anymore!"
They're here voluntarily!
As the girl struggled to stand, three more people armed with makeshift weapons stepped out from behind her. They were all willing participants.
One of the girls turned and shrieked at a boy standing near Tanjiro, "What are you doing over there?! If you're awake, help us! I don't care if you have tuberculosis—if you keep standing around, I'll tell that Lord, and he won't give you any more beautiful dreams!"
Aoi froze. Illness?
Tuberculosis. In the modern era, it might be manageable, but in the medically stunted Taisho period, it was a death sentence.
"I'm sorry, but I have to go fight now. For your sake, please just take a little nap here," Tanjiro said. In a blur of motion, he slipped behind the three attackers and knocked them out with swift knife-hand strikes to the neck.
Suddenly, the sick boy bowed deeply toward Tanjiro. "Thank you. Please... be careful. That demon is very strong."
Tanjiro nodded, a look of surprise crossing his face. He shared a meaningful look with Aoi, and together they leaped toward the roof of the train—the place where the demonic aura was thickest.
The night wind whipped against them, carrying the metallic chill of the tracks and blowing away the last cloying scent of the illusion.
A demon dressed in a formal suit stood with his back to them. Hearing their arrival, he turned his head and offered a polite, smiling greeting. "Oh, you're awake? Good morning."
The demon was slender, his skin so pale it was almost translucent. A playful smirk played on his lips, and his eyes clearly bore the mark of Lower Rank One.
For some reason, Aoi found his smile unsettlingly theatrical—he radiated the vibe of a flamboyant, "sickly" psychopath. She couldn't help but shudder as goosebumps broke out across her back, and she instinctively shifted closer to Tanjiro.
"It would have been better if you'd stayed asleep," the demon sighed. "Why wake up? I went to such trouble to give you such wonderful dreams."
Tanjiro pointed the tip of his Nichirin Sword directly at Enmu, his voice ringing with righteous fury. "Using illusions to imprison people and feeding off their will... a twisted 'dream' like that is nothing but a filthy nightmare!"
Enmu acted as if he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world. He doubled over in an exaggerated laugh, his shoulders shaking and the hem of his suit jacket fluttering in the wind. "Filthy? How naive, little boy. Humans are creatures who love escaping reality, aren't they? I'm simply giving them what they want."
Thinking of her mother's face in the dream, Aoi's eyes burned with sudden tears, and the anger in her chest flared into a blaze. She clenched her fists so hard her nails dug into her palms, the pain lending a tremor to her voice. "What you're doing is a desecration of the people we've lost!"
Her voice exploded into the night wind, thick with suppressed sobs. "My mother protected me in that fire! She traded her life so that I could live! What right do you have to turn her into a shackle to trap me?! Those people willing to drown in your dreams—they have things they want to protect too, they didn't ask to be tricked into running away!"
Enmu's laughter stopped abruptly. He straightened up, a shadow of malice crossing his pale face. "Protect? What a foolish word. Reality is cruel. You protect and protect, and in the end, you're still left with nothing. Wouldn't it be much happier to stay in a dream forever?"
"Nothing?!" Tanjiro's voice rose to a roar, his blade flashing with a cold glint under the moonlight. "You understand nothing! It's because we have people we want to protect that we can grit our teeth and endure this cruel reality!"
Suddenly, Enmu noticed something. He stared at Tanjiro's hanafuda earrings, a sickly, obsessed smile spreading across his face. "How lucky... he delivered himself right to me so quickly. It's like a dream."
"With this, I'll get even more of Lord Muzan's blood. I'll become even stronger... I can even apply for a Blood Battle to take a spot among the Upper Ranks!"
"Water Breathing, Tenth Form: Constant Flux!" A blue tide of blade-wind crashed toward the threads surrounding Enmu.
"Wood Breathing, Fifth Form: Tangled Vines!"
A soft green light pulsed around Aoi as countless supple vines erupted from her blade. Coordinating with Tanjiro's strike, they lunged toward Enmu like emerald serpents.
"Blood Demon Art: Whispers of Forced Unconscious Hypnosis."
Only then did Aoi realize that a mouth had opened on the back of Enmu's hand, emitting a cloying, distorted whisper.
"Sleep!"
Aoi's vine attack suddenly faltered, the vibrant green fading. She bit down hard on her tongue, the sharp metallic taste of blood barely allowing her to suppress the urge to collapse.
Hit by the spell repeatedly, Tanjiro fell into a slumber over and over, only to snap himself awake every single time. His blade swung with terrifying force at Enmu as he bellowed in rage, "My family would never say those things! Don't you dare insult my family!"
Tanjiro's blade sliced clean through Enmu's neck. But to their horror, the demon didn't dissolve into ash.
The pale head rolled twice across the metal roof, yet it remained grinning, a sickly laugh escaping its lips.
"How is this possible?!" Aoi's eyes widened in shock. "His head was clearly cut off!"
The next second, a mass of fleshy, slime-covered tentacles erupted from Enmu's severed neck, writhing and pulsing. "That Lord said... I must kill the boy with the sun earrings. I finally understand his feelings now. Your very existence is enough to make one feel an incredible, boiling rage!"
"Tanjiro, watch out!"
"That expression is truly wonderful!" Enmu laughed psychotically at Aoi's panicked face. "I bet you want to know why I haven't died even though you cut off my head!"
"Fine, I'll tell you right now!"