Surely any child would find something as cruel as being sold by their parents impossible to accept?
Yet the girl recounted it in a perfectly calm voice, as though being sold by her parents had not saddened her in the slightest.
Su Mu was puzzled and could not understand why. His gaze drifted to the girl, and he thought perhaps she was only pretending not to care, putting on a calm face and hiding her sadness.
But the truth was that she really seemed to feel nothing about the cruel fact that her parents had sold her.
It was hard to imagine what had happened, what she had gone through, to become like this.
He did not know how to comfort the girl before him, either. He simply reached out and gently stroked her head. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and a rare look of sheer enjoyment appeared on her face, like a puppy longing for its owner's affection.
"Could you tell me about your past?"
Su Mu hesitated before asking. He knew little about her experiences, only that she was a pitiful girl who never had enough to eat and even had to come out at night to scavenge through garbage for food.
Though asking about a past that might reopen her wounds was cruel, he truly wanted to know what had made her this way.
The girl was clearly very obedient and recounted her past, piece by piece.
Her account was halting, full of which day she had been beaten and what had happened on another day. By the time she finished, he had a rough picture of her past.
She had been born into an impoverished family with eleven children and was the eighth. Her parents often abused her. Whenever she cried, or whenever her parents were in a bad mood, her father would kick and stomp on her. While her mother was still around, she would grab her by the ears and force her head into a water jar. Several of her siblings had died outright from her father's violence. She had survived until now in constant terror, barely clinging to life.
Every day, she felt hunger, sadness, emptiness, and pain. But one day, after she heard the sound of a rope snapping inside her head, those feelings of sadness, pain, and emptiness gradually began to fade away.
After hearing her story, Su Mu fell silent. He had never imagined that parents could be so cold-blooded and cruel.
At the same time, the girl's past stirred a suspicion in him as he looked at her.
Her beautiful pinkish-purple eyes had already struck him as familiar. He had felt that she closely resembled that female swordswoman in the Demon Slayer Corps and had suspected that she might be Kanao Tsuyuri.
He had even asked her name at the time, only to learn that she had none. She was called "Xiao Ba" simply because she was the eighth child in her family. Besides, the skeletal girl looked far too different from the beautiful young woman Kanao Tsuyuri would later become. So he had only thought she was another girl with the same pinkish-purple eyes, not Kanao Tsuyuri herself.
But now, hearing the girl talk about her past, he carefully recalled the background details he knew about Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Before Kanae Kocho took Kanao Tsuyuri in as her "Tsuguko," she had endured a deeply sorrowful past. Those painful childhood experiences were precisely what made her grow into a quiet girl who struggled to express her emotions. Even when her adoptive older sister, Kanae Kocho, later died, she was so heartbroken that she wanted to cry, yet could not shed a tear.
Her childhood experiences also left Kanao without a will of her own and unaccustomed to thinking for herself. Whenever she faced a decision, she only remembered the method Kanae Kocho had taught her: deciding by tossing a coin.
It was not until she later met Tanjiro Kamado that, with his encouragement, she gradually began listening to her own heart and acting according to her own will.
Involuntarily, Su Mu looked at the girl again.
The frail girl was little more than skin and bones, though after he had fed her every night for the past few days, a little color had returned to her face.
"Lift your head. Let me have a look."
Su Mu looked at her and spoke softly.
Though the girl did not know why the man she called Uncle wanted her to lift her head or what he wanted to see, she obediently raised it and looked at him with her beautiful pinkish-purple eyes.
Her little face was grimy from rarely being washed, but the meals over the past few days had brought some color to it. He could tell that her features were lovely, with hints of the delicate beauty they would one day possess.
"If her cheeks filled out a little more..."
He pictured it briefly and could immediately see how lovely she would look. Clearly, she had the makings of a beauty and would certainly become a beautiful woman when she grew up.
With her current facial contours and those same pinkish-purple eyes, the girl's future appearance in Su Mu's mind gradually overlapped with Kanao Tsuyuri's.
Unless something unexpected happened, the girl before him was probably the future Kanao Tsuyuri, a future demon slayer of the Demon Slayer Corps.
"Go on, eat."
Seeing that the girl was still obediently straining to keep her head raised, Su Mu reached out and gave her head a light tap.
The girl obediently lowered her head and ate her rice in little bites.
Su Mu sat beside the campfire, staring absently at the flickering flames.
If I don't interfere, the girl before me will probably become Kanao Tsuyuri, a demon slayer of the Demon Slayer Corps, and follow the path of hunting demons. And a demon like me might become someone she kills.
That was the future that had originally belonged to her.
He could not help turning to look at the girl. Just then, she happened to lift her head, her beautiful pinkish-purple eyes fixed on him, sparkling with a clear light. Only when she looked at him did those usually vacant, seemingly emotionless eyes come alive again.
"Tell me, if I were a demon, would you be afraid of me?"
Suddenly, he could not stop himself from asking. If she knew he was a demon, would she still depend on him the way she did now?
"What's a demon?"
The girl looked bewildered, unable to understand. "Why would I be afraid of you, Uncle?"
Su Mu could not help chuckling. Clearly, the girl understood none of this.
He smiled, then rose from beside the campfire and walked over to her. Reaching out, he gently rested his hand on her head and stroked it. "How about I give you a name?"
The girl had her eyes half closed, savoring the warmth of that large, rough hand stroking her head. When she heard his voice, she opened her eyes.
"Will I have a name too?"
"Yes."
Su Mu gently stroked her head. "From now on, your name will be Kanao
Tsuyuri."
"Kanao Tsuyuri."
The girl murmured softly, as though trying to engrave that name in her heart.