Hey everyone! I hope I won't disappear for months this time before sharing new content with you. I made both of these as *Kimetsu Academy* PNGs! As you know, Gyutaro wasn't animated (and probably won't be), so I took the liberty of creating this version for us.
Anyway, he has his normal skin tone, but I also made a grayish version that I honestly prefer.
Thank you so much for commissioning me! I had so much fun drawing Gyutaro again. I think this might be my favorite drawing I've done of him so far!
If you are interested in a commission, feel free to send me a message. I can do any character, in any au ( ˘͈ ᵕ ˘͈♡)
Synopsis: Gyutaro is reunited with your reincarnations.
Note: Finally, our last day! Thank you to everyone who followed the challenge here and on AO3. Rest assured, there will be more stories about our green boy soon!
When he was human, Gyutaro never believed in reincarnation. He never believed in any divine power or miracles. A person like him had no right to believe in such things. It was him for himself, for his sister, and then you came along.
Despite the misery, you were still radiant. You could still feel the smallest spark of happiness and find comfort in the little simplicity you managed to preserve while surviving in Rashomon. It was pathetic, he thought you were a complete waste of time, always fantasizing about having a decent life and living far away from Yoshiwara.
At first, it was like that. He only talked to you for two reasons: free food and the fact that you didn’t treat him like he was filth. Your presence eventually became something comforting to him and somehow, your delusions infected him, making him, for a moment, imagine a completely different life from the one he had, with you always by his side.
You were always together. He always listened to you ramble about whatever nonsense came to your mind, and sometimes he even allowed himself to join in on your little games. Those were the moments when he was just someone, not Gyutaro. And every memory of you in his childhood warmed him the same way the sun gradually warmed everything around it.
Things started to fall apart when, upon reaching adolescence, you were suddenly taken to one of the tea houses. They needed new girls, and your face was pretty enough to become a courtesan. It was terrifying to be dragged out of those alleys and exposed to a malicious luxury just as cruel as the misery you had lived in.
It was horrible to live that way, to open yourself up in a way you had dreamed of doing with someone who loved you. Every night, at least four times a night. And that awful feeling never left you. It was unsettling, disgusting. You just wanted to get out of there, go back home, go back to Ume and Gyutaro, but mostly Gyutaro. You missed him so much.
And you had no idea how much he missed you. When he found out what had happened to you, he felt devastated once again, wronged and furious beyond measure. The only good thing that made his life less hellish had been taken from him by force, and he had done nothing. How could he? If he killed the ones who dragged you to the brothel, he himself would end up with a worse fate.
He couldn’t get you out of there. He couldn’t buy your contract. He couldn’t even afford a single tea session just to hear your voice one more time. If there was one thing Gyutaro couldn’t stand, it was feeling powerless in a situation he should have been able to fix. And it wasn’t the idea of you being with other men that tortured him the most. It was knowing that you were suffering, that if he had been there when you were taken, maybe he could have stopped it.
When it was Ume’s turn to become a courtesan apprentice, he allowed himself to walk more often through the luxurious streets of Yoshiwara. Being the target of fear and disgust, he always walked with his head lowered to hide his ominous gaze, but he watched people and objects from the corner of his eye. On one of those walks, searching for food, he caught a glimpse of your face on the balcony of one of the houses.
You were still beautiful, but you looked so sad, without that spark in your eyes that he loved so much. That was what hurt him the most. Maybe if he had been there... you would still be smiling.
Your eyes were fixed on the horizon of the city, until they began to wander over the busy streets and found him standing there. Skinny, filthy hair messy and unkempt, torn and dirty clothes, far worse than you remembered.
His heart pounded violently, as if trying to escape his chest. He wanted to run. He wanted to climb those stairs, cross that balcony, grab you and take you away. But his feet were rooted in the filth of the street, as if the world itself was reminding him of his place.
You stepped forward on the balcony, forgetting your perfect posture for a second. The movement caught the attention of one of the women in the house, who grabbed your arm firmly and whispered something harsh. You didn’t hear it. You could only look at him.
He had to accept that he had lost you and that there was nothing he could do. And you had to accept that you could not choose to be with him. You had no voice there, no power. You had nothing but a pretty face and expensive gifts that would have to sustain you until the end of your life, unless some rich man bought your contract before its expiration date.
You never saw him again after that brief encounter in the daylight. And what hurt the most was the terrible rumor that he and his sister had been murdered. A true shame for the most luxurious tea house in the region to have lost Ume, but a great relief for the entire district that Gyutaro had finally gone to hell.
Hearing those cruel things about the boy you had loved since childhood made your stomach churn. How could they be so cruel? He had become someone malicious because it was the only way he found to survive in the midst of so much misery and hypocrisy. Even so, it shattered you.
Of course, he wasn’t that easy to defeat. A simple stab in the back wouldn’t make him fall. And since people had always proclaimed how demonic he was, now they had a reason to say it.
It began with disappearances, unexplained deaths, and illogical ashinuke.
You were terrified of what was happening in the district. Was there a serial killer on the loose? You feared for your life, and you even feared that the danger itself would come to visit you.
It was your last client of the night. You were lying on the futon damp with sweat and other fluids, trying to recover from that torturous ordeal, when you heard the curtains rustling against the windows you were sure you had closed. It frightened you. You thought it was the mysterious killer terrorizing the city.
You quickly covered yourself with the silk kimono, loosely holding the top to cover your breasts, even though the lower part still revealed more than you wished. You stood up to make sure of what was in your room. There was nothing there. At least, that’s what you thought before you felt a pair of arms wrap around you. The skin was cold and corpse-like, too tough to be human.
"Shh... Y/N, it’s me..." That trembling, sickly voice tried to calm you.
You shuddered, wondering what that was and how it knew your name. Some yokai? Or something worse? You tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold.
"No, I don’t want you to see me... I don’t want to scare you." Even though he already had. "I’m a little different since the day you saw me from the balcony."
That hoarse voice, combined with the unmistakable memory you constantly carried in your mind. It was unmistakable.
"Gyutaro?" you whispered in disbelief, touching the skin of his forearm with your fingertips. "How?"
Your voice faltered as a knot formed in your throat. Your eyes burned and a few tears slipped free. You tried to push him away again, using both hands to distance yourself, not caring how revealing the kimono was.
Your eyes traced from his left wrist up to his chest marked with the stains you remembered so well. And that face, it couldn’t belong to anyone else, nor to any other creature. The drooping, venomous gaze, even with the sickly illumination and yellow sclera, was still the same. The hair was the same, though the tips were green now. The marks beneath his lips were the same. He was still thin, but much stronger and taller. It was him.
"How is this possible?" You dragged your fingertips along his arms to make sure he was real. "They said y-you had died."
"Don’t tell me you still haven’t figured it out, Y/N. Come on, you’re smarter than my sister. Use that pretty little head of yours and think a bit." He mocked, stroking the top of your head.
"Y-you..." You froze as reality hit you. "A demon... You became a demon?"
"Ah, I knew you’d get it. You really are a smart girl." He moved his hand from your head to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, caressing your cheek with his thumb. "Now everything is perfect. Well, almost... I still need to take care of you."
You shivered, unsure what kind of care he meant, and seeing how frightened you looked only made him laugh.
"Don’t be scared. I’m not here to hurt you." He lowered his hand to your shoulder, pulling the kimono back up to cover you. "To be honest, I only became a demon because I failed to protect my sister and I failed you... So they gave me a second chance to do things right this time."
You listened carefully to every word he said and felt slightly self-conscious under the way his eyes roamed over your body, even if there was no malice.
"I failed you the moment I let those men take you from me. You have no idea how much I hated imagining you with clients at night. And I hated even more knowing you were forced into it while I could do nothing to stop it." His eyes lingered on the purple mark on the right side of your neck. "I hated it. I hated it so fucking much... I wanted every one of those men who used you dead."
And he saw to it. He hunted down every single one of them and made them suffer in exchange for gaining more strength and power to fulfill his goal: protecting the only people who still made him feel the slightest bit human. But you didn’t need to know that.
You hesitantly raised your hand and touched his face. Even there, the skin was different, more rigid and colder, but it was still him. For one second, just one, his eyes lost their venomous glow and became the tired eyes of a boy who had always lived in filth.
He had imagined this reunion in so many ways, and in all of them you screamed in horror, crawled away trying to escape him, called him a monster and a freak like everyone else. Instead, you were touching him, as if you couldn’t believe any of this was real.
You wrapped your arms around him. His body was stiff at first, as if he no longer knew how to return an embrace, but slowly he yielded. His strong arms encircled you carefully, as if afraid of breaking you. He heard you sniffle against the rough skin of his neck and the red fabric identical to the obi he wore when he was human.
"I waited so long for this..." you sobbed through tears. "I waited so long for you, for a miracle... For anything that would take me out of here and back to you."
"Now I’m here, and I’ll protect you, I promise." He melted into the embrace. He had missed this so much. "Now come, let’s go."
"Gyutaro, you can’t just—"
"Of course I can, and I will take you from here. No one can stop me now, my dear. No one will ever take you from me again. Never." His tone was dangerous.
You had forgotten how possessive and jealous he was when he was human. Now that he was a demon, those feelings had tripled, making him even more dangerous and unstable.
"But what then? Where would I go and how would I live? How could I live beside a demon?"
"By my side," he corrected, watching your face intensely. "You would live by my side, and we would live together like we always dreamed."
Even if you had never truly shared those dreams out loud, you couldn’t deny there was truth in his words. During sex with your clients, you imagined yourself elsewhere, with Gyutaro. You imagined a quiet life with him far from Yoshiwara. It was how you endured those nights.
He had promised you safety, a peaceful life, and that was what he gave you. You couldn’t live in the underground where he took his victims to devour alongside his sister, who you later discovered had also become a demon. She tried to devour you once, but after a harsh scolding from her brother, she promised never to bother you again. Because of that, he settled you in an abandoned house, a bit away from the noise of the center and Rashomon. You were isolated from those people and, honestly, you were grateful.
It was a simple place but cozy. Curiously, there were no windows. You learned that this small adaptation was made because demons died in sunlight and he wanted to stay with you there during the day. So you wouldn’t suffocate, he had kindly broken parts of walls that didn’t catch outside light. He broke at least five different corners of walls for that.
That was the best time of your life. For a moment, it felt like your fantasies had come true. You slept and woke up with him beside you. Only you needed sleep. He did not. Of course, you only went out at night. You were afraid of going out alone during the day and being captured again, so you only left after dark with him.
You felt like a sinner for lying with a demon. You felt like a blasphemy against the divine for thinking sex with him was the most wonderful thing you had ever experienced, better than any of those disgusting men who spent fortunes and lasted only seconds.
Everything was wonderful, even though you couldn’t have everything you truly wanted, like walking with him under the sunlight or maybe even having children. None of that could happen. But you were fine with it, because he made up for lost time, cared for you constantly, and made you feel special until the very last minute.
And in that last minute, his entire world collapsed. He lost track of time completely. Now that he was a demon, time meant nothing to him. But Gyutaro forgot that it still did for you, that you would not be with him forever while you remained human.
He felt stupid and pathetic for making such a terrible mistake, for failing you a second time like that.
As time passed, he tried to forget you. He couldn’t protect you a second time, but he still had his beloved sister to protect, and with her, he was sure he would never fail.
~
The Edo period ended. Japan was changing into a completely new era from the one Gyutaro had lived in. The Meiji era was just beginning. The country opened to the West, imperial rule was restored, Edo was renamed Tokyo, and the misery... remained the same. No matter how modern the world became, misery would always exist, because the miserable had to reach hell so those at the top could cross the stars.
And even though nearly a hundred years had passed since the day he lost you, he had never forgotten you. He was never able to forget your face, your voice, how soft your hands were. None of it ever left his mind, and he tormented himself daily for being so stupid as to forget something as obvious as human mortality.
For decades, he tried to convince himself he had made the right choice. That keeping you human had been a way of protecting you from the curse he carried.
But on silent nights, while waiting for his sister so they could feed in the underground, he constantly asked himself: What if I had been selfish? What if I had forced you to turn? If I had done that, would you still love me?
You had never talked about it, and he didn’t even know he could transform you back then. He was still too weak, and even if he could, the transformation might have killed you. Being responsible for your death was the last thing he wanted. In the end, it was better that your exhausted body finally decided to rest.
Now the only thing that truly interested him was hunting humans and dealing with Hashira. And by irony of fate, you had become one. Yes, you. He was horrified when he saw you pointing your katana at him, threatening to cut off his head and send him to hell.
That hurt. It hurt so fucking much to hear that from you. He never believed in reincarnation, but now he couldn’t deny that the pathetic little thing trying to decapitate him was you in a new life. But what was the point of having the appearance of his beloved if you had none of her memories? What a waste.
For a moment, time seemed to fold in on itself. He saw you on the balcony, crying on the futon, smiling in a filthy Rashomon alley, hugging him, wrapping your arms around him, in the brothel room the day he took you from there. And now you stood ready to kill him.
"You filthy demon!" you charged at him, aiming for his neck. "Go back to hell!"
He almost laughed at how adorable you looked trying to be threatening. His foolish little human was still adorable, just as he remembered. And despite the good memories lingering in your presence somehow, for a moment he felt fear. Fear of losing you again.
"Such a shame you don’t remember me, my love." He blocked your attack with his sickles and quickly disarmed you, shattering your katana like a twig. "Because we lived something unforgettable together."
"What are you talking about? Don’t pretend you know me!" You trembled as you saw the blade shatter. "Y-you..."
You shook as he approached. You were completely powerless without your weapon. Your eyes filled with tears, already accepting your death, already accepting that those sharp teeth would tear your skin apart.
He stopped right in front of you. The sickles vanished into the air and he looked at you. There was no hatred, no malice, nothing a demon like him should have. There was expectation and a hint of disappointment, which made you freeze. He raised his hand and stroked the top of your head, then tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and lifted your chin to make you look at him.
"Do you really not remember me?" he asked. "You have her face... Ah, Y/N, you even have her name. You are her. How could you forget me? You always believed in those stupid things like reincarnation, hell, and heaven. But now that I see you here, I guess it wasn’t as stupid as I thought."
Your breathing hitched. You had no idea what he was talking about. You had only been sent to kill him. But then you remembered. The same gesture he had made nearly a hundred years ago in that brothel room. The memory looped in your mind like a scratched vinyl record. Then others came. And more. When you felt like you were suffocating, you took a deep breath and finally understood.
"Oh my God... Oh my God... Gyutaro, what..." You clutched your head and fell to your knees, crying deeply in that internal conflict.
Your new self needed to kill him, to exterminate him and ensure people’s safety. But the Y/N from the Edo period begged you not to hurt him, to drop everything and return to the full life you once had. It was far more complicated than you wanted it to be. And seeing that, he took his chance. Kneeling in front of you, grabbing your wrists to pull them away from your head.
"Ah, Y/N, how wonderful that you’ve returned to me." He held your hands. "You know... the first time, I admit I was very stupid not to do this. But now... now I won’t fail you."
"What are you—AAAH!"
His fist pierced through your chest. He didn’t like causing you so much pain, but it was necessary so you could be together now. He gave you his blood and watched your transformation closely, wanting to make sure you survived.
It was hard to watch you writhe in agony on the ground as Muzan’s cells overtook your body and mind, scrambling your memories and leaving only the ones that truly mattered. All your memories as a Hashira, and of course, all your memories with Gyutaro.
Your mind was too disoriented to think clearly. You were starving, and he was kind enough to share six whole humans with you. Over time, your reason returned, and now you understood Gyutaro’s intentions and your role from now on.
You were his protected one, his joy. All you had to do was stay by his side and remain alive and safe. You only fought weaker slayers. He would lose his mind at the thought of you facing a Hashira or a stronger demon.
And that twisted devotion you had for him made you see him as merciful and worthy of reverence for being willing to protect you no matter what.
The Meiji era was short, but by his side again, it was wonderful. Now you could live without problems. You could reign in Yoshiwara as demonic king and queen. It was a dark fantasy he loved to indulge in when you were both busy with something between four walls.
But then the Taisho era arrived, and with it came a new generation of Hashira. He thought they were just more pests to get rid of so he could return to living peacefully with you. Until that quartet of idiots showed up to ruin everything again.
He hated himself for not splitting the Sound Hashira in half instead of merely poisoning him. He hated the desperation in your eyes when you realized you were doomed to burn in hell. He hated walking beside you, taking you and his sister to hell for things you never had the power to choose.
He failed you a second time. And it felt horrible. Humanity struck him hard, and all his regrets and sins were paid in the purgatory that cleansed his soul and granted him a third chance at life.
A more modern life, where he was just a human boy. An ugly, troubled kid who lived for his sister and for the weird girl who always sat with him in the school cafeteria. He didn’t remember ever being a miserable beggar, nor a cruel demon. He didn’t remember ever loving you as fiercely as he loved you in this life.
He was still poor, but that pain wasn’t as intense as it had been nearly two hundred years ago. One day, it rained heavily and school dismissed early. He stood under the entrance awning without an umbrella, watching the water hit the asphalt. You were already leaving when you saw him standing there.
"Hey, Gyutaro!" You were pulling your umbrella out of your backpack. "Did you forget your umbrella?"
"Hm, I had to lend mine to Ume." He crossed his arms.
"Let’s go home together. We can share." You opened it and stepped out into the rain. The sound of droplets hitting the fabric caught his attention.
You held out your hand to him. For a moment, he thought about refusing, until a sudden, desperate feeling pushed him to grab your hand immediately.
He felt like he had held it countless times before. It was so soft. And no matter what life he was in, he wanted to be with you in all of them.
Because no matter the form, you belonged to each other, and you would love each other forever.
titsay
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
