A. N. : Spoilers up to the Flower District arc of the manga.

Girls are cute. That's just a fact of life, just like the sky being blue, or Tanjirou's sound being so kind it's heartbreaking.

Zenitsu on the other hand is anything but. He's never liked seeing himself in mirrors. His eyes are too big and kind of buggy, he has an overbite that makes him look like a rat, and now, on top of it all, his hair turned to this weird, unnatural color. It doesn't surprise him that girls keep rejecting him, when they are so cute and he isn't.

The thing is, Zenitsu really loves girls. He loves their cute faces and their eyes and the softness of their skin, the way they put combs and hairpins and bows in their hair, their perfume and their make-up and the way they move so that everything they do looks beautiful and elegant. He loves their kimonos, the pretty patterns and soft colors and delicate fabric. He loves the way girls laugh, the way they sing, the way they talk.

Even when a girl's face isn't super amazing, there is always something to love, be it the shine of her hair or the way her eyes crinkle when she laughs or a soft and delicate voice. Zenitsu doesn't know how anyone could not love girls. How anyone could not want to make them happy.

Kaigaku made girls cry when he talked. Not always, not when they were praising him or when he was in a good mood, but if someone, anyone had the gall to mention Zenitsu's status as gramps' student in front of Kaigaku, he would become terrible. And he would make girls cry. Girls who loved him, often, because Kaigaku looked good even if he was an asshole.

Kaigaku made girls cry, and then Zenitsu would fight him, and then Zenitsu would end up beaten on the ground, because he was weak, still is weak, and it was fair of Kaigaku to hate having anything to do with him. It was horrible to live with, and disgusting of him to make other people pay for it, but it was fair.

Zenitsu wouldn't want anything to do with himself either.

He hasn't met a girl who wasn't wonderful in her own right. Even if she was clumsy, or cowardly, or cried a lot. Because girls are just that great, in a way guys can never be, in a way Zenitsu can never be.

When he meets Inosuke, when he sees that absurdly beautiful face of his, something twists in Zenitsu's gut. It doesn't make sense, he thinks. Inosuke is everything a girl isn't, brash and annoying and loud and violent, with muscles so stiff they feel like bones, and a skin that Zenitsu is pretty sure he could use to sand wood down. Inosuke is a guy, almost disgustingly so, but roll him up in a pretty kimono and get him to shut up and anyone would be fooled into thinking he isn't.

It makes Zenitsu sick.

There's something wrong with him, he knows that. Inosuke's face doesn't make sense, but neither does Zenitsu's reaction. He makes himself sick. The way his stomach turns whenever Inosuke takes off that mask of his, the feeling of something bubbling right under Zenitsu's skin, it disgusts him. He has every reason to be angry at Inosuke most of the time, but the most visceral one is absurd. It feels like envy. It makes no sense. What would he be envious of ? He doesn't want a girl's face, having one wouldn't change what he is, wouldn't make him cute or amazing like all girls are. He'd still be cowardly and useless Zenitsu, with no redeeming quality.

He doesn't want Inosuke's cute looks. He just wants to tear his own face off.

And then, just as Zenitsu has grown used to this new feeling, just as he's decided to crush it with all his determination every time it comes up, and pretend it doesn't exist, then comes Uzui Tengen and his mission.

That guy pisses Zenitsu off, first of all. He's loud and arrogant and adorned with jewelry that would make any girl turn green with envy. And he has three wives. Three. He has the incredible luck of sharing his life with three beautiful and amazing girls and he wastes it by sending them away to dangerous missions. To the flower district, even.

If Zenitsu had three wives, or even just one, he would never put her in harm's way. He would do his best to keep her safe, because she would be more precious than his own life, because she would have chosen him even though he is himself, because he would love and cherish her, and because seeing her hurt would probably kill him.

He would kill himself before he let any harm come to his hypothetical wife. Zenitsu knows that as surely as he knows the sky is blue. And Uzui Tengen not only let harm come to his three wives, he sent them in its way himself. It's unforgivable. It makes Zenitsu furious.

Uzui Tengen makes Zenitsu sit in front of a mirror and massacres his face with make-up, and Zenitsu wants to die. Looking at his own reflection in a way he never does, never wants to do, and being faced once more with the reality of his irrevocable ugliness. Tanjirou's kind smile and Inosuke's cute girly looks are just as ruined, but it brings little comfort. Zenitsu knows even someone skilled wouldn't have been able to make him look like the girl he is supposed to play for this mission.

The same familiar twist of his gut almost paralyses him with that same unknown feeling of sickness. He wants to break that mirror, wants to take the shards and use them to get rid of that disgusting face of his. Surely it would make the mission go better. Surely.

But he doesn't, and he isn't surprised when he is the only one left, the only one who wasn't picked by any of the houses, because of course he is and of course he wasn't. No one would ever mistake him for a girl, not even dressed in the cutest kimono and with make-up that doesn't look like absolute garbage. It makes his stomach turn, makes him so, so angry at Uzui Tengen that he might start crying. It's that guy's fault, everything is that guy's fault, the sickness in Zenitsu's gut and the way even being surrounded by cute girls doesn't make him feel better.

It might almost make feel him worse, and that's something Zenitsu hates most of all. Because that's just not how it works. Because he loves girls, loves being around them. Girls make him happy.

And now even that is ruined.

When he gets in Kyougoku house, it's only because the owner took pity on him. Only because of the anger and disgust and twisted feeling he can't get rid of. She thinks it's resentment, and Zenitsu decides she is right because it's the only thing that makes sense.

He tries not to wonder how it would feel to actually be mistaken for a girl, how it would feel to go around in a nice kimono, to look at mirrors and find the person looking back to be cute.

At one point in between missions, he bought a kanzashi for Nezuko, that he never gave her. He didn't think it through at the time, he simply saw the peach flowers and loved it so much he just had to buy it. It was only when the shop owner asked him if it was for his girlfriend that Zenitsu had realized he had wanted it for himself. But that wasn't right, of course that wasn't right, so he told himself it was a gift for Nezuko, even though peach flowers aren't her at all, even though cherry blossoms, or an autumnal motif would suit her much better.

He still carries that kanzashi with him. Doesn't know what to do with it. He has it during this mission too, hidden in his obi, and it burns through his clothes like lightning coursing through his body, spreading like the branches of a tree that took root right under the kanzashi, right over Zenitsu's stomach.

The last time Zenitsu was struck by lightning, his hair changed color.

He wonders what will change this time around.