[Zenitsu x Tanjirou] Greatest of These

1 January Embers

The first thing Zenitsu did when he came to, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, was cry.

What else was he supposed to do? He didn't know these people at all, and he didn't have to look at them clearly to know. The moment he regained consciousness, enveloped by a bright yellow cloth that hung past his shoulders and ended beyond the stretch of his arm—that he was sure needed to be bunched up quite a bit before he would be able to see his hand again. His stomach clenched a little, an instinctive feeling that something was not right. To make matters worse, there was a digging near his side, an awkward jab that he didn't want to think about or he might risk hyperventilating further.

No, too late. He was already doing it.

He was far too young to be worrying about his death, looming as it always is at the forefront of his mind. Zenitsu stumbled to his feet—three different heartbeats, three completely distinct sounds that his keen ears have never heard before in his life. For someone with as keen a hearing as his, he has found out that different people produce different sounds. Their hearts beat differently, their breathing often varies and they end up producing a cacophonous melody that often reminds him of different things in life.

He hardly remembered his parents, of course. They were gone before he could even hope to remember. The terrifying man with a walking stick and a hard set jaw sounded like thunder-- a rolling and unyielding sound that shocked him when he first heard it. There was this one girl that he thought was the love of his life that sounded like the light tinkling of bells--- her laugh, her smile and the sunny disposition made Zenitsu feel like her sound was bright and airy. He asked for her hand then, but he was rejected.

He lifted his head, seeing two persons. One was frankly quite terrifying with a boar's head on a muscled torso. It was more than odd, which made him let out a slight squeak in alarm as he stumbled backwards a little when the boar bore down on him while wielding two serrated blades in his hands. His sound made him even more agitated, if that could be possible. It was an unrelenting amalgamation of different sounds that melded together--- it was wild and almost feral.

To Zenitsu, it felt fitting.

"Hey, Ganpachirou," the boar said, tilting his head in scrutiny as if it took every ounce of brainpower to look and figure out what exactly Zenitsu was. "Isn't he supposed to be... I don't know, blonde?" He could feel the squinting look from under the boar mask and he almost felt like he was about to be poked and prodded by one of the serrated blades. He shuddered, paling at the thought. He should probably start bawling and begging for his life right about now, but the shock of the circumstances made it hard for his brain to catch up.

"Yeah, he is supposed to be blonde," said a boy that was decidedly more normal looking than the one with the boar's head. However, in hindsight, anything was more normal looking than the boar's head, so he couldn't say. The first thought that came to mind upon finally focusing his attention on the other boy was that the sound was completely different from Boar Head's one.

Where with him it was a wild and feral sound, unrelenting and uncaged, this other boy's was... different. It was, for lack of a better word, gentle. It almost sounded like the crackling of a hearth in the cold winter night, all pops and white noise to lull you into a warm and comforting sleep, or it was like a single beam of sunlight that filtered through the clouds, warming everything it touches--- if there was a sound for that, of course.

He almost grimaced at himself from how blatantly terrible that sounded. It was unnecessarily poetic, even for him. However, that didn't stop him from his almost immediate urge to throw himself at the boy. What did stop him was the third sound--- someone else was there. It was muted and almost as gentle as the one earlier but cut by an undercurrent of... something. It sent a shiver down his back. He didn't like that sound nearly as much. It was like a babbling brook, gentle and calming any other day, but it was listened through a thick glass that distorted the sound into something altogether unsettling.