@breathbeast asked: ❛ Sorry ──── for kicking you & hitting you & hurting you even more than you already were when we first met . I was an awful person & I'm not asking forgiveness , I just wanna apologize . ❜
mouth opened wide, and, admit it: you didn’t see this coming. and he didn’t. habits of other people come easily for him from observation along with his abnormal hearing, that zenitsu can admit - and inosuke, this boar ... there were a lot of time things from him that wasn’t easily predictable. fitting, really, if the indications of his background from when they would converse implied that he’d lived most of his life in the wild rather than in any japanese villages or town. but he, too, zenitsu sees after a while, has some habits that’s very recognisable. for instant, zenitsu can recognise the way inosuke’s stomach growls or is pleased with any food instantly. he can also detect easily of the other’s increasing heartbeat that must’ve been caused by adrenaline and tension piling up from inosuke’s simple stance ... which, really, categorises to most of the time.
which is why, even without any visual aid to the boar-mask, the quick inhalation by the wildest demon slayer member tells zenitsu immediately that inosuke wants to speak. probably suggesting some dumb insane battle or asking some dumb insane question that’ll just in return get zenitsu’s blood pressure to rise up and— but no. no. he’s wrong. what comes out instead aren’t any of those two, at all. the veins that are comically sticking out of his skin disappears, and zenitsu sits back down in seiza to blink back - once, twice - at his friend before, finally, he hears his own breath forms into a voice—
he’d forgotten about it actually. well, no. there’s the thing about living off with wanting attention: zenitsu has learned early in his life that a parentless boy like he is don’t always go around picking good memories. there are no proper parents to welcome him back home, no loving siblings to encourage him when he falls. there are hardships though, a lot of them: unkind men, deceitful women, bullying children. and zenitsu, he - he doesn’t forget. so, no. he didn’t forget, necessarily; just had chosen to not remember it much. tanjiro had forced inosuke to apologise a long time ago, back when they were healing under hisa-san’s home, and the boar didn’t want to. he wasn’t the first to beat zenitsu and didn’t apologise. when that matter had settled, zenitsu thought that that was it. it was normal, anyway. and now ...
a smile. nervous. this isn’t like inosuke. zenitsu wonders if tanjiro had spoken to him about it once more, or maybe something happened that prompt him to open up a wound that’s left to scab. either way, it - it’s strange. not unwelcome, though. just strange. maybe this is what having true friends are like, he thinks amidst all of the other thousand running thoughts. what would jii-chan said if he were, i wonder? would he be proud i’d made them? friends? finally? would he have liked inosuke? ... maybe not so quickly, no ( another smile; more genuine ) but he’ll learn to, like i did.
‘ don’t worry about it. it’s forgiven. ’
zenitsu’s own heartbeat is calm, steady: honest. maybe he’ll never be as kind as tanjiro has always been. zenitsu is the orphan boy nearly everybody discarded and used - even as a demon slayer, he’s hanging desperately on a thread with the form he learned, and the other one he created - but that doesn’t mean he can’t try. still, he hopes inosuke could see it anyway: the way he’s meaning every word said.
‘ you’re ... really the first person to ever properly apologise to me after they’ve hurt me so i - i don’t really know what to do. b - but thank you, inosuke. that - aha, ’ and if there were a bit of tears around the lashes of his eyes, then so be it. ‘ that means a lot. ’