Roar of the Tiger

Midnight turns to morning and stars fade behind the light. His eyes fall, but they refuse to completely shut, and they pop open at every rustling leaf and solemn breeze. Against the demon slayer’s orders, Seiichiro hasn’t moved from his spot. If he did and missed the first survivors as they emerged from the mines, he wouldn’t ever sleep again. However long it takes, he’d told himself. However long, but it’s been hours since the slayer disappeared into the mine. It’s been longer since he’s seen his friends. Longer still that he’s been thinking about it. 

Like he’d been thinking of the devil, the vision comes to him again. Arms and legs and a torso that twisted the wrong way. Teeth bigger than they had any right being. A cooing voice, speaking down to them like a wolf comforting a deer. Three objects rolling at his feet, the bodies they’d been connected to falling in a heap. Glassy eyes, empty smiles. His body tenses at the same time he screams “Run!” in his memory. He can’t run.

The young demon slayer, who’d introduced himself as Kyojuro Rengoku, appears from the entrance, blood on his hands but he is uninjured. A moment of hope, then no one follows, and it becomes despair. There were supposed to be six more. Kyojuro puts a heavy hand on Seiichiro’s shoulder and shakes his head. It was followed by an apology, or Seiichiro thinks it was. He can’t hear anything. There was no cave-in. Their fathers weren’t buried. Suspicions proven right but at what cost?

This was a mistake.