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sillylittleguy420 · 1 month ago

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For the second little request, I have a fic for my wonderful friend @tobytoon I hope you enjoy it, Jayford! It was an absolute delight to work on a little angsty Shinomitsu scene for you <3

Link to the fic on ao3!

Summary:

Mitsuri just wants a closeness with Shinobu that the other woman continually denies her. She almost wishes she didn't know the reason why Shinobu did that.

The thing about Shinobu Kocho, the thing that made her so, so frustrating, was her kindness, the illusion of her being open, she made it damn near impossible to actually get close to her. Despite their supposed friendship, Mitsuri realized one day that she actually knew next to nothing about the other woman. She did not know any of Shinobu’s interests beyond her specialties for slayer work, and well, Mitsuri just didn’t think those should count as interests! At least, not in the sense that she meant. Perhaps hobbies was a better word… Oh, she couldn’t even tell someone what Shinobu’s favorite food might be. She was the Insect Hashira, but Mitsuri didn’t even know her favorite type of bug! Surely she must have one!

At first, she had not let it bother her. Some people were closed off. That’s just how they were, and Mitsuri could accept that it would take a little more effort and time to get to know them compared to others. It didn’t matter, because Mitsuri was insistent, and she could get there eventually. In fact, most of the Hashira had not been able to withstand her attempts at getting to know them! Even the grumpiest, most solitary, frustrating ones had eventually caved to her desires for conversation and friendship.

But Shinobu…

Perhaps that was why she made Mitsuri feel so helpless, so… upset. Shinobu was not grumpy, nor solitary, and while she could be frustrating, it wasn’t just because she was mean or stubborn. Shinobu was kind, Shinobu was chatty, and by all accounts, to an outsider, it likely seemed that Mitsuri and Shinobu were very close friends. They talked a lot, Mitsuri visited Shinobu whenever she could (although the Insect Hashira had never once come to her estate), Mitsuri baked Shinobu treats, she—

Okay, perhaps to an outsider it looked like Mitsuri was desperately vying for the attention of someone who did not want to give it, or at most, indulged out of politeness and nothing else.

But that wasn’t the case!

Shinobu liked her, she did. Mitsuri was not foolish. After spending so many years with various men feigning being interested in her for a short amount of time, she was rather good at telling when someone was genuine or not with their feelings.

Shinobu did like her. It was obvious in the small twitch of her smile when she saw Mitsuri, in the occasional way her tone shifted beyond the same one she always had, in the way that Shinobu always came to personally greet her when she was at the Butterfly Estate because Mitsuri knew the same courtesy was not extended to all slayers, not even all Hashira.

So why… why did she always do this?

Right when Mitsuri thought they were finally getting somewhere, right when she thought maybe she’d finally finished chipping away at wall after wall after wall to catch her first glimpse of the real Shinobu beneath it all, she slammed right into another one, as if Shinobu was building them faster than Mitsuri could knock them down, even with her inhuman strength and determination.

Because it wasn’t just friendship she felt for Shinobu… It—It went deeper than that. Though she had felt the same things for women before, Shinobu was not the first, it was with Shinobu that Mitsuri felt brave and safe enough to indulge it. Here, in the Corps, things weren’t so… rigid, there was a flexibility to these things, more people turned a blind eye to it, and as Mitsuri had come to discover, rather a lot of slayers felt similar things.

Shinobu did.

And beyond even that, didn’t all girls want to know that someone loved them…? To this day, Mitsuri still had not experienced that. If she could give that to Shinobu, let her experience being loved like that, she wanted to do it. And she knew—! She knew that Shinobu cared about her too!

So Mitsuri had been brave today. She had fought through all the doubts and insecurities and decided to be brave today. She would tell Shinobu the truth, tell her of her feelings, before it was too late and nothing could be done. Before the feelings would have to be hidden forever, before Shinobu decided to do something she could not come back from…

Mitsuri had had such an awful feeling about it ever since Shinobu had refused to be a part of the Hashira training.

So she would be brave, she would tell the truth.

Except she had barely even started, and it felt as if Shinobu had already rejected her.

It had taken a lot to convince herself to refer to Shinobu with her given name. She’d been Kocho-san for so very long, because that was what was proper. But they were close, and Mitsuri wanted to be closer. She should call Shinobu by her given name.

So she did.

And Shinobu had blinked, her calm, collected mask slipping for a fraction of a second, before it quickly settled back into place, and she held a hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh, you’re so sweet, Kanroji-san.”

The words made Mitsuri’s heart crack and her stomach drop. The rejection of familiarity by calling her Kanroji-san. Even calling her sweet was almost backhanded. She knew Shinobu did not mean it that way, not really, but it felt that way. Calling Mitsuri sweet was a way to calm her down and shut her up, to push her away. It was meant to write her off as nothing but an overly nice girl who just simply was this sweet, and who treated Shinobu no differently than she treated anyone else. And well—!

That just wasn’t true!

Shinobu was different. Mitsuri did treat her differently, and she wanted Shinobu to treat her differently.

Deep down, she thought that Shinobu might want that too. If not, why not just outright reject her affections? Why not actually push her away? Why was she always so subtle, always so… sad about it? It must be because she did not truly want to do it.

Mitsuri didn’t just want to be the kind, sweet Love Hashira to her.

But Shinobu wouldn’t even use her given name.

“Why do you always do this?”

Mitsuri was not sure if she actually meant to say the words aloud; they were leaving her mouth before she truly realized it. They were quiet, raspy almost, but she was just glad she wasn’t crying. It frustrated her oftentimes, how she cried almost every time she felt angry or frustrated. And she felt a lot of those emotions right now.

Because she just did not and could not understand Shinobu nor why she did this. Why did she constantly push Mitsuri away but not fully? Why did she pretend it was something she didn’t do? Why, why, why?

It almost made Mitsuri feel like a fool.

But it worried her far more.

The battle against Muzan was right on their doorstep, and…

“Do what?” Shinobu asked with an innocent tilt of her head.

The space of Shinobu’s study felt too confining, like the walls were closing in. This horrible, awful, stuffy room that Shinobu shut herself away in far too often. Mitsuri did not like it in here, she did not like the stench of wisteria, nor the soft bubbling of beakers and tubes filled with brewing poisons.

She didn’t like the single, solitary cup of tea sat on the desk that was so out of place among everything else in the study.

“This!” Mitsuri exclaimed as she stomped her foot, ignoring how childish the motion felt. “You always act like it’s not a big deal that you push me away! You pretend that you don’t do it at all!”

Shinobu’s head tilted further, and the movement had no idea to be as adorable as it was. If Mitsuri weren’t so angry, she would have told Shinobu so. “I don’t understand what you mean. You’re a dear friend to me, Kanroji-san, and I would never—”

“Shinobu.” Mitsuri squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Please, just have an honest conversation with me. Don’t do this. Not right now. I-I’m trying to be honest with you, and I ask that you at least return the favor!”

“I am honest with you,” she insisted.

Mitsuri’s eyes snapped open. “No, you’re not! You say we’re friends, but it’s like there's an invisible barrier between us, and you’re the one propping it upwards! Please… You won’t even call me Mitsuri… I—I really care about you, Shinobu. Deeply and truly I do, but I feel as if you won’t genuinely let me. I feel as if you’re not allowing yourself to care about me. And perhaps even that is wishful thinking, but—! But I really find it hard to believe that you don’t care for me at all given some of the things you say and do!”

After the outburst, Shinobu stared at her for a moment, her face as impassive as ever, before her expression dropped, and she sighed, long and deep. “Kanroji-san… I do care for you. It is just that I fear this would not be a good thing for either of us.”

“Why not?!” Mitsuri demanded as she held her hands out.

“Kanroji-san—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Kanroji-san.” Shinobu stepped forward to take her hand, gave it a soft squeeze, and gently ran her thumb along her knuckles. “You’re too sweet a girl for someone like me.”

Mitsuri shook her head. “No I’m not. Stop calling me sweet. I feel as if you’re patronizing me, I feel as if you don’t trust me, as if you think I can’t handle the truth of your feelings. I-I know compared to you other Hashira I must seem incredibly naive and clueless, but I’m not. Shinobu… Why do you push me away?”

Shinobu let go of her hand, and her gaze fell to the floor. “Kanroji-san…”

“Call me Mitsuri. Please,” she begged.

“I can’t do that,” Shinobu said with a shake of her head. “For both our sakes. I can’t. I shouldn’t. It’s not proper, Kanroji-san.”

Kanroji-san. Kanroji-san. Kanroji-san.

Mitsuri swore Shinobu was saying it like a mantra, like something to keep herself in line. As if her surname was a prayer for restraint.

“I don’t care if it’s proper.” Before she could pull further away, Mitsuri lunged to take Shinobu’s hand back. “I want you to call me Mitsuri. I want you to stop this.”

“Stop what?” Shinobu challenged with a sharp glare, her carefully crafted mask cracking further.

“Why didn’t you join in for Hashira training?” Mitsuri whispered as she tugged Shinobu’s hand to her chest. “It’s the same reason you won’t be genuine with me, isn’t it?” She pressed Shinobu’s hand against her sternum, right above her heavily beating heart.

The other girl’s fingers curled against Mitsuri’s skin, too cool to the touch, as if the blood could not make it all the way to her fingertips. “Yes,” she admitted.

“What’s in your tea?” Mitsuri dared to ask.

The question she had never once wanted to ask. It was something she insisted she was being paranoid about. It was ridiculous, such a silly notion, and yet…

Shinobu had never once offered to share any. Which wouldn’t be so odd, but the one time Mitsuri had dared to ask for a taste, because Shinobu brewed it so often, it must be especially good, the Insect Hashira had vehemently confused, and insisted it was an acquired taste, one that Mitsuri was sure to dislike.

Shinobu’s eyes slipped closed.

Mitsuri’s heart beat faster.

“If you’re asking, you must have figured it out already,” she said. “Like you said, Kanroji-san. You are no fool.”

Mitsuri let go of Shinobu’s hand and jerked back, as if her fingers were burning rather than freezing.

No.

No, that couldn’t be right, it couldn’t be true. It was simple paranoia, that’s all it was. Shinobu wouldn’t—Mitsuri couldn’t be right about this. Except…

Mitsuri lunged for the half-finished cup of tea on the desk, and raised it to her nose, all while Shinobu helplessly watched. The scent of acrid wisteria burned her nostrils, and Mitsuri grimaced. Although, she could not be certain that she wasn’t imagining it, that it wasn’t just the scent of the study around her (she wasn’t, it was real, there was wisteria poison in the tea, she just did not want to believe it).

So Mitsuri brought the cup to her lips next.

Shinobu gasped and reached for her, but her hand stopped just shy of her wrist.

Taking a deep breath to steady her frayed nerves, Mitsuri pressed the cup to her lips and tilted it back ever-so-slightly, allowing the foul liquid to drip into her mouth.

And foul it was. The second it touched her tongue, she cringed, her chest immediately convulsing as she gagged and coughed up the miniscule sip of the rancid poison-laced tea. It was as if her body knew she should never swallow the liquid, knew it was awful for her.

“Kanroji-san!” Shinobu exclaimed as she desperately reached for the tea. “Why would you do that?! It—”

Though she still coughed so fiercely it brought tears to her eyes, Mitsuri refused to let Shinobu have the tea back, and squeezed the cup with enough ferocity the porcelain shattered, slicing her palms and fingers. The fresh cuts burned as the room-temperature liquid cascaded over them, as the open wounds bathed in the poison that Shinobu drank every day.

Shinobu gasped, and jerked backwards.

“Why would I do that?!” Mitsuri demanded through her tears. “Why would you do this?! Why would you put this in your body, day after day after day?!”

Shinobu bowed her head, and though her composure had begun to waver, she was still far calmer than Mitsuri. “I have to kill him. No matter the cost.”

Unable to contain her panicked heartbreak any longer, Mitsuri pressed her bleeding, poison-slicked hand to her mouth as a sob escaped her. “You’re hurting yourself, you’re killing yourself…!”

“Do you understand now?” Shinobu asked, her voice far too soft for the situation. “Why I can’t give you what you want? It would only hurt you more in the end. This is better for the both of us, Kanroji-san.”

“No.” Mitsuri stomped her foot down on the shatter teacup, crunching the porcelain further. She lunged for Shinobu’s desk, and began ripping open the drawers to dig through them. She shoved papers and objects roughly aside, caring nothing for what they were or how fragile they might be.

She couldn’t allow this. She wouldn’t allow this.

She would not lose Shinobu to this, not to her own hand. Even if she insisted otherwise, that was all this was. The death of a demon wasn’t worth this; it wasn’t worth her. It didn’t matter what demon. Not even Muzan Kibutsuji was worth Shinobu’s life to Mitsuri.

Shinobu did nothing to stop her, and Mitsuri could not decide if she found that surprising or expected. She merely stood in the center of the study and watched Mitsuri tear every drawer open, rip every cabinet apart, watched he throw papers and vials and objects to the floor as she searched so desperately.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Mitsuri rasped, the demand weak even to her own ears. “Shinobu, tell me where the rest of it is!”

Silently, mechanically, Shinobu stepped over to one of the few cabinets that Mitsuri hadn’t damn near ripped off the wall yet, and flicked the door open. Inside were many brown paper packets, presumably containing loose leaf tea mixed with wisteria. Carefully crafted poison that Shinobu dosed herself with daily, perhaps multiple times a day.

With a desperate sob, Mitsuri hurried over to rip the packets from the cabinet. She was unsure of what exactly she intended to do with them yet. Destroy them, of course. But how? Perhaps she would burn them. Or maybe throw them down an old abandoned well somewhere. It didn’t matter. So long as something was done with them that left them entirely out of Shinobu’s access.

(It didn’t matter, not in the end, and Mitsuri knew that, somewhere in her head. Shinobu would make more. Of course she would. She wasn’t going to stop because Mitsuri threw a single fit over the matter. Come tomorrow morning, she’d settle down with another cup of poisoned tea, freshly made, no matter how many of these packets Mitsuri destroyed).

That was likely the reason Shinobu did not try to stop her. Shinobu was likely already calculating how much of each ingredient she needed in her mind. This was inconsequential to her. Mitsuri was not stopping anything.

That didn’t mean she could do nothing though.

Only when her arms were filled with the little packets and she could not hold another one without dropping two more, did Mitsuri halt her frantic grabbing of them and fully processed how pointless this all was.

“You’re not worth this,” she whispered.

“I know,” Shinobu answered.

Something told Mitsuri they meant two entirely different things.

The packets slipped from her arms, falling to the floor with dull patters. “I’m taking them with me. All of them,” she said. “I’m not letting you do this to yourself.”

“Okay,” Shinobu said, her voice as calm as ever.

Mitsuri shut her eyes, a desperate attempt to stop any more of the tears, but it was a failed effort.

Shinobu’s words weren’t lies, exactly. She wasn’t going to stop Mitsuri from taking these things. Perhaps she even found some comfort in the fantasy, the idea that the poison was leaving and would not be coming back.

As if she wasn’t going to make more the second Mitsuri left this office.

Mitsuri rubbed at her eyes with her sleeves, letting them soak up all the miserable tears, and she stepped towards Shinobu to grab her and crush her in a hug. Ignoring Shinobu’s surprised squeak, she merely hugged her tighter, nestled her into her chest, and rested her chin on the top of her head.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please stop this.”

“Mitsuri…” Shinobu’s arms came up to clutch at her back and she rested her cheek against her chest.

Mitsuri only cried harder as the Insect Hashira finally used her given name. This wasn’t how she wanted it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

It sounded like a goodbye, like this was the very first and last time Shinobu would ever use her given name.

“Promise me you won’t make more.” Mitsuri clutched her tighter, desperate to feel Shinobu’s real, breathing, alive body beneath her hands. “Promise me.”

Shinobu let out a shuddering breath.

And she did not make a promise.

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sillylittleguy420 · 2 months ago

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For the sake of clarity I am aware 100% that what I'm about to posit isn't canon - like this absolutely IS not canon and I would never frame it AS canon? Because it sorts of implies a depth that's a bit out of the scope of a manga like Demon Slayer. This is COMPLETELY Head Canon. . . and with that out of the way uuhhhhhhhhhhhhh - I think Kanae was a womanchild -

WAIT HOLD ON A MINUTE LET ME EXPLAIN MYSELF Oh and also light Chainsaw Man spoilers ahead: She just kinda DID things, didn't she? We don't know how she adopted Aoi and the other butterfly girls, but we KNOW she basically yoinked up Kanao on a whim - or really, Shinobu was the one who bought Kanao. I think she was impulsive - and while well meaning, absolutely flighty and maybe inattentive. . . To Kanao, specifically to Kanao thanks to her disability, and I think she projected ONTO Kanao with the whole coin and "A man will save her teehee" thing. And I think that comes from a deep seated desire to be saved herself - I think she kind of resented the situation she was in and wanted to be free of it, because just as much as Shinobu was ultimately robbed of her childhood, Kanae was also very much robbed of hers (if not even more so), and I think both her and Shinobu processed this in VERY different ways! and I think Kanae's method was. . . maybe a bit more delulu than we might've thought? Shinobu grew up fast and had to accept the world as it was almost right away - meanwhile, Kanae might've shrunk into herself and created this happy go lucky lalaland where as long as she did SOOOMETHING everything would come out fine.

She thought there could've been good demons. . . And there can be, Nezuko is RIGHT THERE, as is Tamayo! But Nezuko is before her time, and Tamayo is a big fan of NOT being known of (And is also pretty explicitly freed from Muzan's control), I'm sure if she met Tamayo she'd feel VERY vindicated, but she never did. So while Kanae wasn't wrong, I think this came from a place of delusion, of justification, she didn't want to think something 100% evil COULD exist? everything has a reason, and the thought that something could've come into her life, completely without purpose and so effortlessly destroy it without a hint of remorse probably fucks her up a little. Douma's kind of the ultimate accumulation of this, a big fat, disgusting pretty boy refutation of her ideology and he KILLED her! And there's also of course the way she potentially affected Shinobu - Shinobu clearly holds her in an extremely high regard, but we see (in the anime at least) that she was somewhat critical of Kanae's careless actions, and at the time was probably trying her best to reel her sister in - because for all of her good intentions? She might've had a habit of dropping things and picking something up right after - undiagnosed ADHD because this bitch is living in the Taisho era for goodness sake. So while Shinobu might say "The moment Kanae died is the moment I had to grow up extremely quick" the truth might be more so that she had to grow up quick immediately because of Kanae's flightiness and childishness.

I think what's particularly interesting is how this all ties back to Shinobu and how she ends up processing Kanae's death and her actions in life, and how she seems to completely drop being critical of her, creating this idealized "wise beyond her years" image of her sister in her head after she passed, when she knew full well that Kanae had her own problems she was going through, and was far from a perfect person. . . Extremely well intentioned yes, but a Womanchild who needed her little sister to tug her back, because she might not have had the maturity to stop herself. Kanae's inability to cope with a loss of her childhood, just straight up robbed Shinobu of hers COMPLETELY - Shinobu was forced into the "straight man" position instantly, because Kanae was in lalaland, she had to be the one to comprehend the weight of Kanae's actions and her tendency to just pick-up orphans off the ground, and she is the one who had to DEAL with it - Kanao especially! Outside of her being like - fucking four, Shinobu never had a chance to ever act her age - meanwhile Kanae was able to do. . . whatever she wanted because Shinobu would cover her and make-sure her altruism went through. I think a part of this is why Kanao for example seems to be FAR more attached to Shinobu than the memory of Kanae - even though at the time Shinobu was resentful and annoyed at the younger Kanao, she still did everything she could to make sure the girl LIVED - while Kanae did. . . fuck all, taking on more of an "Auntie" role as opposed to the sisterly/motherly role she probably wanted to be. It makes me think of the scene where Kanao wasn't crying at Kanae's funeral, I don't think it was because Kanao was UNABLE to cry, she's still a person, as stunted as she was.

I think it's because she didn't KNOW Kanae, she didn't get ATTACHED to Kanae - Kanae gave her a coin and said "A Man will fix her." She might've done more in off-screen canon - but for the sake of HC lets say she didn't - meanwhile, Shinobu was putting in the effort, she was helping Kanao eat, bathe and take care of herself, to the point where I think if Shinobu died instead of Kanae at that moment, she might've actually cried.

It reminds me of how Denji tackled Himeno's death in Chainsaw Man - and Denji much like Kanao is sort of. . . Fried emotionally - he didn't have the emotional capacity to formulate his emotions and feelings about Himeno - instead he was stuck on "Why aren't I cryin'?" because the fact is? He BARELY knew her, he saw everyone else crying and didn't understand why he WASN'T! Kanao was the SAME exact way about Kanae I feel. Shinobu is to Kanao what Kanae is to Shinobu, I don't think Kanao thinks much about Kanae because Kanae just wasn't there for her like Shinobu was. But because of how Shinobu glorifies this image of Kanae in her mind, she can't really - STOP Kanao from doing the whole coin thing, because she views it as a memento of her sister - and it might mean more to Shinobu than it does to Kanao - Kanao just uses it as a method to figure things out, and Shinobu views it as the last real relic of Kanae's impact on someone other than herself - so despite knowing that it's unhealthy and a bad coping mechanism, she can't bring herself to coach Kanao out of it. Shinobu also took to this awfully - after Kanae's death I think she completely forgot the womans flaws, and created this OBVIOUSLY rose-tinted version of Kanae in her head that she ASPIRED to be like, the perfect big sister bereft of the flaws that made Kanae a person. I should go into THIS in more detail some other time, because I think Shinobu's perception of Kanae, and how it eventually became interchangeable with herself and how she used this mental image of Kanae to essentially berate herself for being a failure in HER OWN EYES is also something worth giving a whole post to.

So to end this off: I don't think Kanae was a bad person, I don't think she's secretly manipulative or mean spirited, I think she was genuinely an amazing person who tried her best, but she was a person - a human being with issues and unresolved trauma that caused her to act more childish and airheaded than she should've (And not to mention she was also a straight up child as well. So the moniker of womanchild is a LITTLE harsh? But eeehhh it gets the point across), she didn't have the time or tools to reflect on herself and how her absentminded actions could affect others - and these absentminded actions and lack of maturity caused Shinobu to become someone Kanae would probably be devastated over.

#demon slayer #kny shinobu #kocho shinobu #shinobu kocho #kimetsu no yaiba #kny #shinobu #kanae kocho #kny kanae #kocho kanae #kimestu no yaiba #kanao tsuyuri #kny kanao #Butterfly Sisters #Kochou Sisters #csm denji #Dennis is here too I guess #What do you WANT FROM ME I'M TRYING MY BEST

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