A Genius Among Humans

Hidden Training

Welcome to part two of my story! I hope you enjoy!

"Tanjrio, Tanjiro!" mitsuri was yelling as she shook me awake

"Oh, are we here?" I asked as I stood up from my seat

Mitsuri then grabbed me by my hand and pulled me off the train to where she lived. It was a huge house with lots of flowers around it. There weren't any other houses nearby so this would be the best place to train me.

As we went inside she showed me where my room would be and where all the other rooms are. Then we immediately went into the backyard for training 

"Now Tanjiro, what style I'm about to teach you is Love breathing, it is originated from Flame breathing. Love breathing is all about using your flexibility, speed, and agility to its full potential." Mitsuri said

'Love breathing? out of all the ones... I guess I can't complain though,' I thought

"First things first, in order to teach you you're going to have to train to have the proper body for it, so you will be stretching, running, and doing exercises all day,"

I gave her a forced smile and said "Thank you,"

She then looked at me for a moment before asking me something "Why do you do that?"

"What do you mean?" I asked back

"You're always doing a fake smile, there's no love behind it at all,"

It shocked me that she found out but there was no need to keep up the acting any longer. My smile quickly went away as I looked at her and said "I smile because it used to keep my family less worried about me. As for why I'm like this... who knows,"

She didn't say anything but just kept looking into my eyes.

"If you don't want to have me as your disciple you can just say it. You teach love breathing, after all, I don't know if this would fit me," I said as I stood up to walk away

But then she grabbed me by my arm and pulled me back "You seem to think that I don't want to have you here. Although you may not say it your eyes show that there is love behind them, they just haven't been shown yet."

"What are you talking about?" I asked

"I mean that even if currently you have no love, I'm positive that you will have love in you in the future, and even if you're my first disciple, I will accept you with open arms!" Mitsuri said with a large smile

'What?... She knows how I am and won't push me away?' I thought

"Then I will take you up on your offer," I say as I sit back down

"Alright well first things first, stretching!" Mitsuri said

She then proceeded to bend my body in ways that I thought they weren't supposed to bend. Afterward, she had me run 10 miles and do 100 pushups, 100, situps, and 100 pullups.

"haaa...haaaaa" I panted as I tried to regain my breath.

"Don't get too tired yet!" Mitsuri started "You have to do it all again tomorrow so get some rest," 

I then gave a nod and went into my room to go relax for the rest of the night.

'Man that training is tuff' I thought

I then looked inside my pockets and realized the money I had stolen was still there but it didn't look like there were any stores nearby so I just put them back.

'Mitsuri is... weird, She knows how I am and still keeps me as a disciple. I can't imagine what she's thinking' I thought as I drifted off to bed.

When the next morning came there was a note left on the kitchen table that said "Tanjiro, when you read this I will be gone to go on my missions, make sure you keep up doing everything we did yesterday, you should have plenty of food and water. When I come back I'll put you threw some test that will make your life terrible if you don't do the training. Good luck! Love Mitsuri"

'Love Mitsuri?' I thought as I threw it away

I then went and did all my exercises day after day for a whole 6 months.

(6 months later)

"Hey, Tanjiro!" Mitsuri yelled as she came running towards me

"Oh, hey Mit-" I was then cut off when she jumped on me and wrapped me in a bear hug

"H-Hey too tight!" I managed to get out

"Oh, sorry!" she said as she let go

"So how did this mission go?" I asked with a blank face

"It went well! no casualties or anything," She replied with a grin

"Anyways now I think that you are ready to learn the forms of love breathing!" She said proudly

I turned around to see her give me a whip.

"There are only 6 forms of love breathing. I gave you a whip because you have to use a special Sword to efficiently use love breathing. Like this one," she said as she pulled out her katana. It seemed like an average sword but then when she went to go attack a training dummy it turned into something like a whip.

"Alright so watch closely," she said as she did all 6 forms right in front of me (For the fourth form I'll make something up.)

She then walked me through how to do each one step by step

I then tried to do them on my own and failed.

"Don't worry about it too much! they're really hard to learn at first but once you start to get it, it gets pretty easy!" she said with a smile

I nodded and kept on trying to get all of the forms down

(4 months later)

"Mitsuri, I can now do all of the forms," I said in a monotone voice

"Now for your final part of training...YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME A GENUINE SMILE!" Mitsuri yelled out

I looked at her with a deadpan expression and sad "Really?"

"Well, if you don't want to you don't have to but it would be nice to see," Mitsuri said with a smile

I looked at her and gave her a forced smile to see if I could play it off

"NO, BAKA!" She yelled "A real smile! one that comes from the bottom of your heart!"

After a while of just staring at each other she finally gave up "...Fine you win. However, your real final part of training is final selection. During that, you will have to survive 7 days in a forest full of demons,"

"Alright, when is it?" I asked

"It's in 6 more months so during that time you'll be sparring with me," Mitsuri said with a smile

"What about when you're on missions?" I asked 

"You'll run 20 miles, do 200 pushups 200 situps, and 200 pullups!"

"Alright then..." I said 

From that day on I was doing an even harder training. For my fights with Mitsuri, I only won one time and that was when she just got back after a super tuff mission so I definitely am not as strong as her yet. Then before I knew it it was time for natural selection

(6 months later)

"Bye Mitsuri, I'm going to final selection now," I said emoinlessly

"..." She didn't say anything at first but then wrapped me in a hug, not one of her bone-crushing ones but a genuine hug, "Please Tanjiro, come back alive," she said with some tears leaving her body

"..." I didn't know what to say or do but for some reason my arms moved and wrapped her back in a light hug

"See... I knew there was love in you," she said with a smile as some tears started to come out.

"Well I'll be going now," I said as I took off

"BYE TANJIRO!" Mitsuri yelled as I left

With that, I was off to Final selection

(Done)

Thanks for reading this Chapter! Next chapter is when you are finally going to see some action with Tanjiro both Physically and mentally. I hope that Tanjiro's character development doesn't seem too rushed so far. Currently, the only one he even holds a little bit of emotion to is mitsuri and you will 100% see his colder side in next chapter. Anyway, I will hopefully see you soon!