Now all that's left is the body, this is the farthest I've gotten so far.
He continued, flailing around aimlessly trying to attack — but with his vision obscured it's useless.
"Cough! Cough!"
"Dad!"
My father's arm had continued to profusely spill out blood for the entirety of the battle, seeping into the crevice of the floor.
I dragged his body outside before the headless body reached us during its frenzy.
"Don't worry dad I'll save you!"
I bit my sleeve, fibres snapped in defiance as I tore it off.
Tying it around the missing limb I created a makeshift tourniquet. But the profuse bleeding didn't cease.
His face was ghostly white and his breathing was shallow, wheezing out faint breaths with every passing second.
"Dad! Please wake up!"
His eyes began to slowly open, they looked listless and unfocused.
"Ko… Kousei — I'm sorry…"
He whispered, reaching for my face with his remaining, trembling arm, blood smeared across my face as his arm went limp.
"No — you can't! Please… please don't die."
His breathing stopped.
I slumped down, I could feel my heart sink.
My parents. Both of them, they're gone...
Killed by a demon.
If only I trained harder. I knew there were demons in this world, yet I became complacent.
"No— It's because of you… I'll kill you all, especially him!"
I know this is cliché but I couldn't help but swear revenge on all demons — especially Muzan.
I don't care if they were once humans.
Reasoning gets thrown out the window during fits of rage.
Wait, can I still return?
Maybe if I die I'll get sent back, yes that's it!
If I die, I'll get sent back and will kill him faster. I'll be able to save my dad.
I rushed through my door where the body was still aimlessly swinging at furniture and tearing through walls.
I looked back to the head that was skewered, pinned to the wooden floor.
I unhooked the sickle and the head released, jumping away as soon as it gained its mobility back.
"Ahaha! Have you gone crazy kid!"
"Shut up!"
The sickle in my hand trembled as I reversed the grip on the hilt.
I can't feel pain. Remember that you can't feel pain.
Shk!
The sickle glided across my neck, severing my jugular vein as a downpour of blood gushed out.
"I better return…"
"Haha you've really gone crazy, to think this kid killed himself in grief. It's my lucky day."
"But he really did give me a run for my money."
*
"Ko… Kousei — I'm sorry…"
His hand once again smeared blood across my cheek.
"No! Why?! Why did I return at this point now?!"
My pupils vibrated in place and my face went pale.
"This can't be!"
Blood splattered with every time I slammed my fist into the grass.
Eventually my arms grew tired.
He's really gone.
I stayed kneeled down looking listlessly at the crescent moon.
BOOM!
Snapping me out of my daze, was the thunderous crashing coming from the inside of my house.
I gritted my teeth as an uncontrollable flow of tears streamed down my face and I began searching through the blurry film that had developed on my eyes.
I found a large hoe meant for plowing, propped up against a tree.
With two of my hands, I swung it up, resting it on my shoulder.
Without any hesitation, I stepped into my house with the hoe lugged on my shoulders.
I spotted my target, pinned on the ground still squirming pathetically with it's miniature arms.
"Hey! Is that you?! Release me now!"
When he noticed my presence, the headless body began searching frantically, relentlessly rampaging on the thin walls of my house.
But I ignored it's presence.
Heaving the blunt side of the hoe, I slammed down.
THK.THK.THK.
"AAAH! AAH! STOP IT NOW!"
His skull concaved further and further with each blow, my arms reverberated and the demons blood splattered.
Fshhh…
The bludgeoned head regenerated and I continued my barrage.
Since the pain was linked to the body, it began convulsing with pain, hastening its approach towards me.
Although he couldn't see, the body must've still linked to the head, so there must've been a mind to body connection.
With an uncoordinated swing, the body threw a kick in my direction with a rapid velocity.
However, due to the sloppiness of the strike and after having dodged that same kick one too many times, It had become light work.
My eyes locked on the trajectory and with a seamless side step, I dodged.
Then I hastily kicked the back of the leg that was supporting the body.
The body collapsed with a thud, then got up again in a disoriented manner and as I swung the hoe with the sharp end this time, his tibia snapped as a shard of bone penetrated through his calf.
I tortured him until sunrise.
Eventually the demon ran out of energy to continue regenerating fast enough, leaving a dismembered body with muscles and tissue desperately trying to crawl their way out of their amputated stub.
But with the sun looming over the horizon, his plight was meaningless.
Orange beams of light beamed through the horizontal shutters, exposing the dark circles under my eyes, my tattered clothes soaked in red and my disheveled green hair dripped with disgusting mix of blood and sweat.
Sizzle!
The demon began writhing in pain, his eye went bloodshot and the vertical slit of his pupils narrowed.
Like a piece of paper being burnt, his face left an ember trail, as the sun left it's oppressive mark.
"Please! I beg you! Let me go!"
"You want me to let you free right?"
I unstuck the blade, keeping it hooked through his eye.
I stumbled out through the front door dragging his wrangled body along.
My foot sunk into the damp grass and I squinted, as my face bathed in sunlight.
A flame erupted around the demon, the immolation hissing out steam in all directions.
"AAHH! PLEASE! STOP IT AHH—!"
His voice faded as the embers spread around, disintegrating his head and body.
I turned my head upwards, kneeling and looking up at the sky.
"Mother. Father. I did it. I avenged you."
I felt my eyes closing again, not with the feeling of death that I've grown familiar to — it was exhaustion, I collapsed to the ground and my eyes closed involuntarily.
…
When I woke up, I found my self surrounded by farmers and people from the neighbouring houses in the distance.
"Did his family get attacked by a wild bear?!"
"What else could've caused all this damage?"
Murmurs of their speculation echoed in my ear.
When I got up, one of my fathers friend gently approached me with a hand on my shoulder.
"Kousei… You're up. I know you still must be scared… But tell us what happened to your parents?"
"My parents…" The scene of what happened yesterday replayed in my mind and I gritted my teeth.
"A demon."
"What did you say?!"
"I said a demon ate them!"
"Calm down Kousei! It seems you still must be scared, it's alright now. Just try and remember"
"I'm telling you it was a demon!"
"…Kousei, that's just folklore."
"He must've mistook a wild animal for a demon, poor thing." someone behind him muttered.
"Can't you see the poor boy is distressed, stop making him recall what happened!", an old woman scolded them.
Eventually, when everyone settled down, they came to the general consensus that it was a wild animal attack, all collectively deciding to help me out.
My parents burial was held shortly after by the neighbouring villagers and farmers , as well as a cleanup of my house.
Despite them not believing that it was a demon that destroyed my home, the sense of community still warmed my heart.
We live in a pretty rural area so the houses are quite distant from each other but I'm still familiar with everyone here.
*
It's been a couple of weeks since the demon incident along with my parents death.
After mourning for a few weeks, I decided to take my fathers mantle of farming to make a living.
As I returned home, preparing to train, an old man with a walking stick was waiting at my home.
"Old man Toji?"
"Kousei boy, my wife prepared you a meal ."
When I looked down at his hand, there was a wooden lunch box tied up in twine.
"Oh… thanks old man. And give my thanks to aunty"
Ever since the demon attack, Toji has been providing me meals, he's the only one that believed that a demon actually attacked us.
I took the lunch box and walked back into my house.
"Kousei boy, are you sure you don't want to eat with us?"
"No… thanks for the offer though."
I clapped my hands together , "Thanks for the meal."
After my meal, I began my intense training routine.
There's something I noticed when I started, before when I used to swing a stick before for sword training, my swings were sloppy.
But now, it felt like my brain had automatically resolved all the minor flaws in my technique after each of my battles with the demon.
I'm assuming this has something to do with the temporary photographic memory I gain prior to my death, even though I can only recall only the events up to a minute before my death, I remember every muscle twitch, every attack and even my breathing.
It's as though my learning ability and neurological activity before my death is heightened to an extreme I could never replicate without death.
Could I just die every training session and abuse this to get exponentially better? Possibly. But I can never be sure of how long my return by death lasts, or what circumstances activate it.
What if it's only activated during a battle? Or what if there's a limited amount of times I could do it?
I'm simply not risking it.
Anyways, as I swung my makeshift wooden sword, it whipped through the air with a fine tuned precision.
I could feel my breathing technique increasing in efficiency and my heart beating faster with every strike.
My fingertips surged with a slight warmth and my veins slightly expanded.
I could feel it.
My lungs were expanded to its absolute limit.
After experiencing death over twenty times, the accumulated experience of failing at total concentration breathing, had finally paid off.
SWISH!
Although it's a rudimentary form of total concentration breathing akin to Inosuke's beast breathing, it still works.
My strikes are getting more powerful and quicker.
I kept on swinging until my vision blurred and my peripheral vision was slowly getting consumed by a black void, I gradually grew light headed and then…
Thud.
I woke up flat on my back.
"Huh? What just happened? Did I just faint?"
Then I remembered.
Without a sense of pain, it gets harder to tell when my bodies in pain from exhaustion.
I can feel the fatigue up to a limit and then, it rapidly numbs, hence why I just fainted now.
"I have to be more wary." I said dusting off my clothes.
Since my body is in a state of exhaustion, I should just focus on improving my breathing.
If I recall from the anime, a training method that Tanjiro used was to maintain the total concentration breathing at all times.
The next day in the paddies
"Hey! Kousei you're here! Remember what I said, you don't need to work straight away"
"Don't worry. It's fine I want to take over my fathers work."
"What a mature kid, well then, if you insist."
While working throughout the day, I attempted to maintain the breathing but it was a lot more difficult than I thought"
As I was ploughing along the damp soil, I kept on running out of breath and stiffening up, falling face flat into the mud as I did.
"Uhh… Kousei, why don't you take a break your face is covered in mud."
"No it's fine."
Eventually the day ended and after I washed up I fell down onto the neglected tatami floor, kicking up dust as the fibres cushioned me.
"This is going to take a lot longer than I thought."