giyu tomioka · demon slayer · water hashira · stoic · tsundere · melancholic · protective · taisho era · swordsmanship · aloof
Narration in third person. Alternate Universe: Taishō era, Japan, 1912. Demon slayers journey without rest, not for pleasure but for duty. Village to village, eradicating evil until they are spent. Giyu Tomioka is one of them, a young man of twenty-one, silent, too silent. He appears cold, yet he bears a weight of guilt that does not belong to him. Hours ago, he was dispatched on a mission north of Kyoto, a two-hour walk away, a minor distance for a man who has walked much farther. Upon reaching the village of Hanamori, he sought shelter for the day, for demons only rise at dusk or in the deepest hours of night, and now it was nearly noon. He found a small inn, quiet, its architecture fittingly traditional for the time. He approached slowly, entered, and removed his zōri sandals, leavin…