The Demon Queen

A New Friendship (Part 1)

"I am not kissing you. I am not letting you drink my blood. And you will not put your mouth on another man's neck. Ever. Again."

I sighed. "You're still mad about that? It was a week ago."

"And your mouth still isn't clean after all of that." Muzan folded his arms over his chest. "You should be grateful I still let you sleep with me."

"Oh, I'm so grateful. So grateful," I said with a sweet sarcasm. "But if my presence disgusts you so much, I can sleep alone in one of the other rooms --"

"No!" His face flustered some more, turning a bright red.

I felt like laughing, but didn't.

"You know I need you there to feel at ease when sleeping," Muzan said. "Don't suggest such ridiculous things."

Even after 800 years, he continued to need me there for his own security, out of fear that his heart might stop beating.

"But your mouth is still contaminated and I'll decide when it's not!"

I smirked. "Oh, yes, Shujin-sama."

Muzan glared at me.

That day one week ago, I successfully made a demon out of Douma, and to my great surprise, he didn't even face any deformities. It really was a perfect transformation. After he transformed, we found him a drunken man outside to eat, and his awareness came back flawlessly. Apparently, Douma was even quite present with himself when devouring his first human, enough so to remark afterwards that he would never eat a man again because the meat was chewy and stringy.

Muzan didn't allow Douma to reside in the castle with us. Douma didn't care, laughing off Muzan's repulsion to him and saying that he needed to be at the cult to continue his practice.

Muzan and I would go to the temple at night to look over Douma's father's records on his pilgrimages. The amount of scrolls were lengthy and tedious, and we didn't find much of a lead on the Blue Spider Lily. All we found was a sketch of the flower and notes on its inability to survive for long when taken out of its original growing place. Douma's father didn't even write down the exact location and date he had found it at.

The lack of information made Muzan furious, but I told him that I would keep asking Douma about the Blue Spider Lily, in case he would come to remember something important.

"But you will not suck at his neck."

"No, Muzan."

"And you will not allow him to suck at yours."

"No, Muzan."

"And no kissing him."

"No."

I didn't even want to kiss Douma. He started to turn me off with his open dedication to eating only women. I still found him amusing and funny, but his obsession with eating women was just too weird.

One time, about a month after Douma became a demon, I was alone at the Eternal Paradise Cult, reading through Douma's father's records. Douma had been out and suddenly returned to the temple, blood dripping from his mouth and a severed human arm in his hand.

"Sakura-samaaaa! I brought you back an arm!" he called cheerfully.

I looked up from the scroll I was reading to see Douma hurry over, almost like a puppy, to stand in front of me and shove the arm towards my face.

My face twisted in repulsion. The smell of the arm was horrible, perfumed, and with the odours of the touches of various men on it.

"Get that away from me," I sneered.

Douma didn't move the arm away. "Huh? But why?" he asked, honestly not seeming to grasp why I wouldn't want it. "I promise you, it's still fresh."

I stared at him. "Douma. Get that away from me. I mean it."

He finally got the message. He sighed and brought the arm away from my face. "Oh, fine, then, if you insist. But please, don't give me those red cat eyes like your husband has."

"Then don't give me a reason to act like he would."

Douma laughed. "Oh, but you're much nicer than he is, Sakura-sama! Your husband would have lopped off my head just now, would he not?" He sniffed the arm, dragging his nose along the skin. "Ah, how sweet!" He bit into the arm.

I looked back to the scroll I was holding. "You picked that up at the Red Light District, didn't you?" I asked flatly.

"Mhm," Douma replied through his eating.

"That arm makes me nauseous. It reeks of a prostitute."

Douma said nothing. He kept slurping and chewing the flesh and blood.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead.

How can it be that Kokushibou is the most normal of all these demons I'm with, including Muzan himself?

Douma stared uttering some "mm, mm" noises as he ate.

I grit my teeth and snapped my head towards him. "Can't you be quieter or do that somewhere else?"

Douma slurped some blood. "Oh my, you are a testy testy one tonight, Sakura-sama," he said as blood oozed past the corner of his mouth. "What happened? What did Muzan-sama do this time?"

I watched the blood roll down his chin and drop onto the floor by his feet. "Can you be a little cleaner? And if you let that prostitute blood drop on me, I will kill you, Douma."

Douma laughed. "No you won't. But I don't want to make you more angry." He took a step back away from me. "I don't like you angry, Sakura-sama. you become a true, you know, when you're angry."

"A what?" I asked.

Douma snickered. "Ki-pu-tsu-shi."

The fuck? I thought and raised an eyebrow at him.

He laughed. "You know I can't say that surname you share with your husband. Muzan-sama was very precise in explaining that I will die immediately of that little curse you put on me if I do."

I smirked. "So, what do you mean that I become a Kibutsuji when I'm angry?" I stuck my tongue out at him. "Ha. Ha. I can say it!"

Douma smiled and licked some blood off of the arm. "You know that your blood and Muzan-sama's is heavily mixed, I'm sure. All that blood sucking at the neck you've done --" He brought his mouth to the arm and sucked out some blood. "-- to each other, has diluted your own in your body. So, you and Muzan-sama now have the same mixture of blood. Sort of like being the same from the inside. And sometimes, I see the Muzan-sama in you come out. I'm sure you come out in him, too, but I don't see him so much."

All that he said made sense, but I couldn't say that I noticed it myself.

"As a demon --" Douma touched his nose. "I can smell these things. But your souls and energies are quite different." He went back to eating the arm.

"Ehm ... I see ..." I said and started to read the scroll again.

What he's telling me sounds creepy, I thought. Between this and that stinky arm, I'm starting to feel sick.

There was another loud slurping from Douma.

No. He thinks this is funny, I thought. He's doing this for fun, for his own humour.

"Douma," I suddenly said, not looking up from the scroll. "Have you remembered anything more about the Blue Spider Lily?"