The Demon Queen

Apology

Late that night, after not talking to or being around Muzan for the entire evening, he found me in a room within our wing. I was laying on my back on a futon, throwing a leather ball up into the air and catching it. I noticed Muzan standing in a stiff posture at the doorway, staring at me.

I kept ignoring him and threw the ball up again to catch it.

"Sakura ..."

I tossed the ball to myself again. "What?"

I sensed his body stiffen. "I'm ... sorry ..."

"Okay."

I tossed the ball to myself again.

"I've been foolish."

"Okay."

I tossed the ball to myself again.

Muzan grit his teeth and walked over to me. The next time I threw up the ball, he caught it.

"I'm talking to you," he said.

I sighed and sat up. "I know. I'm listening." I moved over from the centre of the futon to one side. I tapped the spot next to me with my palm. "Come here."

Muzan carelessly lobbed the ball to a corner of the room and sat down beside me. He folded his arms across his chest and looked away from me. "I was wrong and you were right."

"Okay."

He seemed irritated by my response. "So don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you."

"Okay."

I watched him for a moment. He still wouldn't look at me and instead started to scratch his head. "The sunrise should be soon. Do you want to go to sleep?" 

"Together. I don't want you sleeping in this room alone."

"That's fine. I was planning to go to the bedroom anyway."

Muzan looked at me with a stiff pout on his face.

"What?"

Silent, Muzan kept looking at me for a while before he pulled me into a hug. "Do you still love me even if I make mistakes?" he asked.

"I -- I don't see how that's a question."

"I'm sorry ..." he said. "That I'm not a perfect being ..."

I held him. "You don't have to be."

Muzan said nothing.

"There's no such thing as a perfect being, Muzan."

"I won't believe that, but forget it," he said. He loosened himself from our embrace and looked straight into my eyes. "I don't want us fighting like this ever again. I don't want to ever again be doubting whether or not you'll still welcome me to your side."

I smiled a little. "Muzan." I ran my hand through his chin-length, wavy hair. "That would never happen. I promise."

"Still, when you're away from me and angry at me, I'm miserable,"he said. "I don't want anyone allowed to come between us again."

"No one's really going to come between us."

"Tamayo did. And so, I support your suggestion that we kill her."

It's about time he came to his senses, I thought.

"Not right away, though," he added.

"Why not?"

He slouched a little. "It's selfish of me, but I want to observe her after this incidence as part of my experiment. Tamayo has a heightened level of independence, it seems, and it's important for my research on the domesticated demon."

I wasn't happy with his answer, but I understood why he wanted to "close" the Tamayo experiment in a way that would leave behind more complete material. "Fine," I said. "But don't let her get to you again. Don't let her beat you."

"I won't," he said. "I have a different view of her now." He raised his chin some. "If you feel that I'm getting overtaken --"

"Manipulated --"

"Overtaken by her, please snap me back in line. In privacy, of course."

"You know that I will."

Muzan nodded, smirking a tiny bit at the corner of his mouth. "Then we have a deal," he said. "So, let's go on as normal and give Tamayo no reason to be suspicious." His smirk faded along with the confident position of his head. "I don't trust her to risk her getting suspicious."

"What do you mean?"

"She already has a reason to be suspicious because of evaluating her own actions," Muzan explained. "If we act like nothing happened, she'll soon forget about it, or assume she got away with it. If we give her any reason to suspect that we plan to dispose of her, she might just risk trying to escape the castle. And if she succeeds, she might set off to find that band of vagabond sword-wielding humans."

The band of vagabond sword-wielding humans, as Muzan called them, was a group of young swordsmen who started killing a lot of lower-rank demons about a year ago. In recent months, increasingly stronger demons had been killed by one of the swordsmen. Muzan and I never came upon a demon that survived a battle with them, but Muzan was able to receive some sensations off of the mid-range demons that died. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get the information that the swordsmen used some kind of technique associated with a particular method of breathing that put their skills far above that of the average samurai. And apparently, it made them very skilled at beheading demons. Muzan was a bit paranoid that a demon would give out our identities to one of the swordsmen, but I assured him that I got no sensation that the curse I placed on any of the demons had been activated in recent years.

After the curse killed a couple of demons that were gossiping about Muzan and I, the news spread and remained widespread as a warning among the demon community that the curse was very real and to be taken with the upmost seriousness.

"If it bothers you, we should start calling each other by different names when we're out of the castle," I said.

"That's not a bad thought," Muzan said. "Still, Tamayo can't be put under the idea that she's going to die in the near future. If she knows we plan to kill her, she might just decide that it's worth dying trying to escape or by giving out our identities to one of those humans." He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "The existence of those humans irritates me. I don't believe they're a threat to us, but it's that I don't understand what this sword technique they use is or how it works."

I shrugged. "The only way to know would be to get one of them on our side."

"They're high and mighty in thinking that they'll kill all of our demons. That's not likely. You can't reason with egos like that. It's like reasoning with your parents, and we both know how that went, Sakura."

I shrugged again. "Yeah. Well ..."

"Sorry," Muzan said. He put his hand on my shoulder. "I hope you still aren't affected by that."

"No, not really." I put my hand on top of his. "I just wish someday I'll finally forget that man's face."

"Sorry." He hugged me. After giving me a kiss to my cheek, he said, "Let's go to sleep now, and try to push this all from our thoughts." He shuddered a little. "I hope I don't suffer another nightmare about those vagabond humans."

I rubbed his back. "You won't." I stood up and walked over to the corner Muzan tossed the ball in. I picked it up and looked back to Muzan, who stood up and smoothed out the fabric of his kimono. Lobbing the ball lightly to myself as I walked, I went back over to him and left with him to our bedroom.