Tanjiro raised his axe and charged into the room with a roar.
He had expected a fight to the death with a demon, but the sight before him almost made his mind shut down on the spot.
Tanjiro had thought his mother and sister would suffer a demon's brutal slaughter. Heartbreaking scenes had even begun surfacing unbidden in his mind, but what he saw left him rooted to the spot, at a loss.
His mother was busy by the hearth, where the faint aroma of food drifted out. His sister Nezuko was kneeling safely on the mat and seemed perfectly well, too. There was also a man sitting quietly in the seat of honor, sipping tea, with a very delicate-looking girl beside him.
Everything in the room seemed safe and peaceful, completely different from what Tanjiro had imagined.
His mother was unharmed, and so was his sister. Everyone was fine.
For a moment, he even felt as though he had returned to the days when his father was still alive. Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion, or perhaps the sudden reversal, but for a moment, the man before Tanjiro even seemed to overlap with his father's figure.
Back when his father was still alive, this was what their home had been like. After finishing his work, his father would sit inside drinking tea, his mother would bustle about the room, and his sister would stay beside his father. Those days had truly been happy.
But the man sitting there now was not his father, but-
A demon.
The demon took a small sip of tea, nodded to him as he entered, and spoke gently:
"Tanjiro, you're home."
He seemed entirely unconcerned by the axe Tanjiro held raised.
Just like his father back then, he was so gentle that he hardly seemed