Chapter 24: Despair

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Disclaimer:

I do not own nor claim all the rights to 鬼滅の刃 | Kimetsu no Yaiba | Demon Slayer; all rights are reserved to its respective creator, Koyoharu Gotōge. This is purely a work of fiction; names, characters, businesses, events, localities, and occurrences are all extrapolated from the author's writings and imagination or utilized in a fictitious manner. As such, any direct or indirect references to actual entities, dead or alive, or events do not, in any shape or form, resemble the opinions of the author.

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"..." = Dialogue

'...' = Internal monologues

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Reading the comments for the previous chapter was probably the most entertaining thing I did that day.

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Fireworks.

Hanabi.

The mid-summer fireworks festival.

The interrelation between Japan and fireworks is but an idiosyncratic arrangement.

In most countries, fireworks are displayed as a means to celebrate a special event.

In Japan, however, they are mainly employed to be enjoyed without any particular reason; they are regarded as less of a formal occasion and more of leisure activity.

Thus, most Japanese perceive watching fireworks in the summer as being equivalent to watching cherry blossoms in spring.

They are considered to be a display of evanescent beauty, one that should be enjoyed with friends or loved ones.

You eat, you drink, and you engage in informal colloquies while watching the combustible flowers manifest themselves in the sky.

Hence, why there is such a lively and nonchalant atmosphere that is prolific throughout the festival grounds.

The ubiquity of food stalls and entertainment booths that are adjacent to the pathways can be easily discerned through the congested crowds.

People from all walks of life–soldiers, sailors, workers, children, mothers, fathers, students, and many more–have congregated to bring some levity to their otherwise hectic lives. They are to merely relax, celebrate, and relish the moment.

After all, these were changing times.

Rural families are moving, for the first in generations, into the pandemonium that constitutes the pith of the urban environment. Their simple-minded approach to life is immediately challenged whence they are brought into the polluted, frenzied, and feverish setting of a booming city.

Young boys are enlisting into the armies in droves, heeding the call of their Emperor to fight this new war. Many are expected to be shipped off unto either another part of Japan, a colony of Japan, or a faraway foreign nation that is an ally of Japan.

Whatever the reason may be, and there are plenty, the general mood exuded by this audience is one of trepidation for what the future may hold, but also hope for what it may bring.

Thus, as a country and its people transmute into a radically different society, there are times when one simply needs to take a break from the chaos.

There are times when one must simply lay back and gaze upon the heavens as human ingenuity attempts to make a temporary exhibition of its flair.

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