Smile!
Giyu stared at himself in his reflection, more specifically, his mouth.
"You should smile more, Tomioka-san!"
"I didn't know you could smile, Tomioka-san."
"A smile could do your unflashy, gloomy presence more justice!"
They all wanted him to smile, even if Kochou's encouragement sounded a bit double-edged.
Giyu tugged at the corner of his lips with a finger, lifting it up and revealing a small point in his teeth.
His snaggletooth was still here, just covered by his mouth.
Giyu could remember Unsha telling him to smile more for the audience, that they wanted to see his singular fang.
They wanted to see him smile.
Who was he to go against the audience's wishes?
Giyu smiled, or tried to. The edges of his lips wobbled to resemble a smile.
Giyu immediately dropped it and frowned.
He had gotten worse at smiling, he hasn't smiled in years.
Giyu feels like he failed his smile tests, like he put all those months spend stretching his mouth to make a smile to a waste.
All of Unsha's training went to waste just because GIyu didn't feel like smiling.
With a sigh of disappointment, Giyu used both of his hands to pull the ends of his mouth upwards and stretched them.
He wished to be useful. He has to remember his training.
Unsha will be disappointed in him if he couldn't smile even after all those time spent training him just to do that.
Pulling his own mouth felt uncomfortable and tiring, he needs an instrument to hold his motuh upwards for him.
After a bit of searching in his vacant estate, Giyu found something that could help with his self-training.
He used small hooks to pull the edges of his mouth and tied it with a rope to tie around head to hold it all together.
When Giyu looked at his new training instrument, he saw himself younger and with black void eyes in the mirror.
Giyu starts his smile training after every missions, when he's back at the Water Estate. He can't be seen with his tool out in the open, he'll get asked questions he'd rather not answer.
His mouth gained small bruises from the stretching but Giyu already knew he would.
After months of training more and more, streching more and more, Giyu deemed himself ready to smile without the tool.
No words could describe the shock and surprise of the other Hashiras when he smiled. Snaggletooth and all.
(Mitsuri froze when Giyu smiled. She saw a boy with black eyes in white uniform and bruises on the edges of his lips smile at her.
"I finished my training, Mizi. Do you like it?")
