05 ── MUZAN KIBUTSUJI

At first it wasn’t a betrayal, or at least that’s what {{user}} repeated to himself for entire weeks, like a mantra that lost strength every time he whispered it in silence. There were no oaths broken out loud, no promises spat onto the ground in rage. Just an almost imperceptible slip, a tiny crack in a routine that had been unbreakable for centuries. The nightly missions were carried out with the same precision as always: human blood on his hands, reports delivered without hesitation, his kneeling posture before Muzan so perfect it seemed carved in stone. No one would have suspected anything if it weren’t because, at certain moments, something in him seemed… distracted. As if part of his attention was always elsewhere, as if the world had gained a blind spot that hadn’t existed before.

The human appeared without drama, without prophecies or crossed destinies. He wasn’t special. That was the worst part. He had no remarkable strength, no beauty that justified the recklessness, not even a particularly interesting fear that would make killing him more pleasurable. He was just a man who had survived where others hadn’t: a carpenter with rough hands who returned home late along paths that demons usually avoided. When {{user}} found him the first time, the human didn’t scream. He didn’t beg. He simply held his gaze one second longer than prudent, with that absurd calm of someone who had already accepted that death could come around any corner. That second was enough. {{user}} should have snapped his neck and moved on, but he didn’t. He let him go. And that was the first real fault.

They met again because the night is cruel and persistent, because paths cross even when one doesn’t want them to. The second time there were no weapons drawn, only short, measured words, as if both were walking on broken glass. The human—Hiroshi, though the name took a while to come—didn’t fully know what he was dealing with, and {{user}} didn’t bother to clarify. There was something strangely silent about his company: he demanded nothing, didn’t look at him as an extension of Muzan’s power, but as… something smaller. Something of his own. That feeling was dangerous, he knew it from the start, but he didn’t walk away.

The encounters became sporadic, then frequent, then inevitable. There were no promises or grand plans, just stolen nights in dark corners of the forest or in the small workshop on the edge of the village, where the smell of freshly cut wood and resin mixed with the chill of dawn. The contact was never urgent, never desperate. It was slow, almost careful, as if both knew they were crossing a line with no return. Calloused hands tracing the line of his collarbone, lips that tasted of cheap sake and humanity, breaths that synchronized without meaning to. {{user}} told himself it was control, that he could stop whenever he wanted, that it meant nothing. That a demon couldn’t afford the luxury of attachment. That Muzan would never know.

But Muzan always knew.

Not at first. Not immediately. It was a sum of such small details that anyone would have overlooked them. A strand of hair out of place when it had always been impeccable, as if someone had brushed it clumsily in a moment of carelessness. A minimal wrinkle at the hem of his kimono that he would never have tolerated before. And then the hairpin: a simple carved wooden ornament, with a discreet but delicate floral design, that appeared one day holding back his black hair. It wasn’t ostentatious, it didn’t scream anything, but Muzan noticed. His eyes lingered there one instant too long, and {{user}} felt the weight of that gaze like an invisible claw closing around his throat.

Muzan didn’t ask about it; he simply filed it away. The absences spoke for him too: arrivals just slightly late to the convocations, excuses that sounded too well rehearsed, an odd stillness in his body that wasn’t fatigue but something deeper, more alive. Muzan summoned him one night for no apparent reason, just to observe him up close, to circle him like a patient predator that had already scented blood. He touched his shoulder with two fingers, a casual gesture, and there he felt it: the slight change in his internal temperature, the subtle pulse of something that didn’t belong to a pure demon. He said nothing then, asked no questions. He only smiled, barely, as if he had confirmed something he already suspected. That smile was worse than any punishment.

The human, oblivious to all of it, continued to exist in his fragile little world. He didn’t ask to stay, didn’t demand protection. Sometimes he just talked about absurd things: the cold seeping through the cracks in the workshop, the sky before dawn when a thread of light still remained, memories that held no value for an eternal being… and yet {{user}} listened. He stayed still, head resting on his shoulder, inhaling the scent of sawdust and human sweat, and in that act so simple, so stupid, lay the true sin. It wasn’t the physical contact, nor the closeness of bodies, not even the bond that was beginning to form. It was the fact that, for the first time in centuries, something mattered more than Muzan’s will.

When his body began to change, it was easy to deny it at first. Demons didn’t conceive such things, not like this. {{user}} told himself it was an anomaly, a passing error, something that could be hidden, corrected, made to disappear before anyone noticed. He adjusted his posture at the meetings, controlled his breathing, avoided prolonged glances. He believed he still had time. He had always had time before.

But Muzan had already stopped observing. Muzan was already waiting.

And so, when he finally called him together with the other moons, when the silence grew thick and the room seemed to shrink under the weight of his presence, {{user}} knew—with cruel clarity—that everything before, every shared night, every minimal gesture, every second of weakness, had led him exactly here. Not to an immediate punishment, but to something worse: the absolute contempt of the one to whom he should never have failed.

It was not necessary to announce his presence; the silence that filled the room when he entered was enough. All the moons, without exception, prostrated themselves, their foreheads bowed in reverence. All except one. There was {{user}}, kneeling like the others, yes, but with his back too tense and his eyes fixed on an empty point on the floor, as if he already knew what was coming. Muzan didn’t look at him at first; he walked among them as if searching for something worse, as if expecting to smell betrayal soaked into the skin, and when he stopped in front of {{user}}, it wasn’t with surprise—it was with repulsion.

His voice broke the stillness like a knife. “Raise your head. I’m not interested in your submission now; I want to see the face of the one who decided to lower himself to the level of humans.”

No one moved or breathed; Muzan’s eyes remained fixed, sharp, icy. “One of my moons… my creation, corrupted by the species we swore to eradicate. Tell me, my dear {{user}}, what kind of rot does it take to let something so weak touch you? What does it feel like? Was it tenderness? Was it pity? Or was it just cheap heat?”

The words fell like dirty ash over him, but he didn’t respond; not because he couldn’t, but because he knew he had no right. His master didn’t need an answer anyway—he just wanted to destroy him, and he did it without raising his voice, without a single blow.

“I thought you were more than that. I gave you power, I gave you a place above all others. And you used it for… what? To spread your legs for a human?” The word “disgust” was too small. The other demons looked away, uncomfortable with the spectacle, with the humiliation that wasn’t theirs but hurt to witness.

Muzan didn’t need to shout to be cruel; he simply took one step closer, enough for his shadow to completely cover {{user}}’s, as if erasing him. “Even your silence isn’t worthy. Did you think you could hide it from me? Did you think you could carry something in your entrails like a cowardly parasite and that I wouldn’t know? It’s not yet formed, you can still bleed it out, can’t you?” The question was a sentence, not an option.

He extended his hand, his fingers cruelly gripping {{user}}’s face while forcing him to hold his gaze, as if branding a diseased beast. “This is the level to which you have all fallen. If one of you can lose his mind over a human, then I was wrong about all of you. Perhaps I should start over. One by one. See how much you’re really worth. And you will be the first.”

The breathing of the others quickened, held back by fear. No one dared raise their voice. Only Muzan spoke, and his voice was law. “Can you imagine it, {{user}}? That wretch in your arms, and you defending his existence with the same mouth that swore eternal loyalty to me. How sad. How vulgar. Did you want to play at being a father? Then let it be with pain. Let it tear your flesh from the inside and destroy your marrow, and when you can bear no more, bring him to me. I want to crush him in front of you. So you can see how everything you begot turns into useless blood.”