Brothers "Fighting" and the First Appearance of the Afterlife Recitation

"Too much chatter."

Squelch.

Roy suddenly appeared, his hand-blade plunging into Dohi's head and shattering it.

He shook his hand, letting Dohi's brains splatter across the ground, then turned to look coldly at Tanjiro. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"I know..."

"Then why didn't you strike?"

"I... I don't know..." Tanjiro stammered, not daring to meet Roy's eyes.

Roy simply drew his axe and held it against Tanjiro's throat. The blade pressed right against his carotid artery; a shift of five millimeters would pierce the skin, sever the vessel, and end his life.

"You don't know? Very well..." Roy laughed in anger.

"Since that's the case,"

"Rather than seeing you get eaten by a demon next time..."

"I think it's better to kill you now. At least—"

"I can still leave you a whole corpse!"

Sympathizing with a demon? Who do you think you are?

In the original story, it was precisely because Tanjiro hesitated that Urokodaki Sakonji nearly gave up on him. Now... Roy felt that Dohi, whose head he had just blown apart, was right about one thing—

A spineless pushover deserves to have a blade held to his throat!

"I... I just thought he was a bit pitiful..."

"Is the man in the temple whose entrails he tore out pitiful?"

"Are the people he's eaten over all these years pitiful?"

Roy's anger flared. With a flick of his palm, he swung the axe and struck Tanjiro across the face!

Bang— The heavy, powerful blow sent Tanjiro flying ten meters away. He only stopped when he slammed into a large tree, sliding down the trunk...

"Remember what I said. If there is a next time, if the demon doesn't kill you, I will!"

Sheathing his axe, Roy shouldered his basket and walked into the shrine. A small oil lamp burned inside, casting an orange halo around his retreating back.

Tanjiro sat slumped against the tree, legs splayed, his right cheek swollen like a pig's head. He didn't even notice the pain, his vacant eyes staring blankly at Roy's back.

When he was young, his father Tanjuro always taught him to keep a kind heart when out in the world and to lend a hand to those in need. But today... it seemed his kindness had been misplaced.

A demon is a demon, and a human is a human. A prey sympathizing with a hunter is a path to self-destruction.

Dohi's corpse, having lost the control of its brain, turned to ash. The snow began to fall harder and faster...

After a long while, Tanjiro finally snapped out of his daze, only then feeling the burning pain in his right cheek...

Thanks to the brutal training from the Zoldyck family since childhood, Roy knew exactly how to strike someone after being on the receiving end so many times. Although this was Roy's first attempt, his technique was skillful enough to only damage the skin and flesh without harming the bones.

So, while Tanjiro looked miserable, he was actually fine. He was even able to crawl up from the ground, kneel in the snow, and shout his apology toward the shrine.

He was still young and capable of being molded. If this had been an adult, Roy would have killed him without a second word to avoid being dragged down.

Without even looking back, Roy snorted coldly:

"Do you need me to come out and help you up?"

"Get in here yourself."

As he spoke, Roy set down his basket, found a broom in the corner near the door, and began to clean up the corpse and bloodstains in the shrine.

Having received a "pardon," Tanjiro let out a long sigh of relief. He hurried to Roy's side, snatched the broom from his hand, and offered a fawning smile: "Let me do it, Nii-san, you go and rest."

"Don't worry, I promise I'll clean the shrine until it's spotless, without a trace of the smell of blood."

Roy trusted Tanjiro's "dog nose"... Since he had volunteered, he decided to give him a chance to prove himself.

Until...

The boy walked behind the statue and saw the mountain of bones piled up...

Only then did he truly awaken—

Why Roy hadn't given Dohi a single chance.

As it turns out... these evil demons, every last one of them, deserved to die!

"To think I actually believed that guy's lies..."

Tanjiro's face turned ghastly. If he could, he would go back a few minutes and slap himself for being so foolishly kind.

But time cannot flow backward, just as the people these bones once belonged to could never be brought back to life.

Roy had already seen this scene through [Gyo].

For now, he said nothing. His heart, like the moon obscured by clouds tonight, was cast in a thick shadow.

The Zoldyck family killed, too; his grandfather Zeno even killed daily, far more than Dohi ever did. But whether it was Zeno, his father Silva, or Roy, they had never seen the old man in action—they always chose to give their assassination targets a "quick end," allowing them to depart without pain.

However, this pile of remains before him was different...

Roy found it hard to imagine the kind of agony and despair a human must feel when being eaten alive.

Wearing those hanafuda earrings that symbolized the sun and the mountains, he stood in silence for a while before moving again. He passed the basket, pulled out a hoe, and turned to walk out of the shrine.

His father Tanjuro had noticed the hoe was dull and specifically instructed him to find a sharpener at the foot of the mountain; it seemed it would come in handy now.

Tanjiro heard the footsteps, turned his head, and noticed the hoe slung over his shoulder. Realizing what he intended to do, he picked up the oil lamp and followed him in silence.

The two brothers circled around and found a patch of open ground behind the shrine where it connected to the mountain. Braving the wind and snow, they began to dig, and before long, they returned to the shrine...

They carefully gathered the remains and laid them to rest in the pit.

By now, the snow was falling in goose-feather-sized flakes.

Tanjiro, illuminated by the dim light of the oil lamp, muttered a prayer: "May the Fire God bless these poor souls, grant them passage to the afterlife, and may they be reincarnated soon..."

When Roy finally shoveled the last mound of earth onto the grave, he stopped and asked cautiously, "Nii-san, shall we go inside?"

Roy leaned on the hoe, standing tall in the wind and snow, staring silently at the grave mound without a word.

Yet, in a place Tanjiro could not perceive, his eyes were veiled in a layer of milky-white "Nen"...

Tanjiro, met with a cold shoulder, assumed Roy was still angry and wisely kept his mouth shut.

It wasn't until a cluster of milky-white energy drifted out from the grave that he heard his older brother cup his hands in a salute toward the mound and say, "My apologies for meeting you in such a manner..."

"This Humble One is Kamado Eiichiro. May I ask your name?"

"This lowly one is Minamino Hirotomo, a resident of Kouchida Village beneath Mount Sagiri. I offer my deepest thanks to Lord Eiichiro for avenging me."

A gust of chilling wind swept through, swirling snow onto Tanjiro's face. Tanjiro rubbed his eyes, looking over in utter confusion...

Roy gently stroked his forehead, using his own body as a medium to channel a layer of energy, coating his younger brother's beautiful amber eyes...

Only then did his foolish little brother notice that right by his feet...

There stood a blurred figure, facing Roy, prostrating himself in a dogeza, bowing deeply.

"Isn't that the uncle who just had his internal organs ripped out by the demon?"

Tanjiro let out a startled cry!

That was right... it was indeed the man who had been eaten by the demon.

Through the manifestation of "Post-Mortem Nen," he had appeared in Roy's life for the very first time!