My mom is mad because I blew off all my money on merchandise yesterday. I think she's getting frustrated with me. Sorry for the low quality again. It's not 2k, nothing makes sense here, and I'm trying to work things out between school stuff and this and everything else.

More info you don't care about; if I end up participating in my school's research program for psychology I think I'll pick up narcissism as my project (if that's possible, it might not be…). There's basically nothing I can find discussing how to a third party can help a narcissist become not-a-narcissist, which seems, uh. Yeah.

Chapter 1: My Demons

"You can't turn an angel into a demon and blame them for being evil."

Muzan makes demons because some people deserve it.

He lets them know in advance what it entails, too - the whole "I can read your thoughts" and "you need my blood" and "you can't go out in the sun or you'll die" and "don't say my name or you'll die" shenanigans. They already know about the eating humans part, usually, and learn about wisteria and the demon slayers eventually.

He gives all the people he makes demons choices. Sometimes they don't want to be demons, and that's fine. He kills them. A swift death is merciful. These people have no reason to stay alive anymore.

Those he turns into demons, he gives them more things. His blood, for one thing. Power. And he lets them go, after telling them that he wants them to figure out a way to let him walk under the sun. In most cases the demons don't bother doing that and go around wrecking havoc only to be slain, but that's not really the point here.

The point is - Muzan wants to walk under the sun. He is immortal but he can die, and that contradiction is pretty big, so in the end, Muzan isn't immortal in the sense of forever living regardless of other circumstances and he craves the sunlight which is deadly, so. Another big contradiction there too.

(He doesn't care about the sun because he wants to be perfect. He cares because being a person - which isn't the same as being a "human" - means being social, being alive during the day and he's a person too, right?)

(Even if he hates humans, there are things about being in a society that he misses.)

Being mad is akin to being sad - it's just a different outward reaction, but inside you feel quite the same.

Muzan is old, and being old makes you tired.

He is not, however, suicidal. He knows the value in life because he has clung so desperately to it - he recognizes that he wants something he can't have.

So he settles for the next best thing.

…walking around at night instead.

He doesn't need sleep, doesn't need food, doesn't need water - he doesn't need anything, to be honest. But he craves things still, there are things he wants, like how humans have food and water and shelter and they desire still more, Muzan has time and an infinite amount of it and he wants the sun (he wants interaction).

He's good to go most of the time. He goes around and just… submerges himself. He ignores the heavy feeling in his chest and he is-

It feels… nice, almost.

Well, okay, there are those times where he ends up turning people into demons because he's compelled by a sudden wave of disgust but he chooses the people who seem to most angry or tired or done.

And he gives them a reason to live. A reason to exist. They might serve him or they might not and in the end Muzan is left waiting for a solution that will never come.

Then the demon slayers come, and some die, and some kill demons, and it's merely a balance in the world. Some demons aren't strong enough, some humans aren't strong enough, and in the end everyone will die. Except Muzan, maybe.

Most things in the world are consistent in that way.

…Then Tamayo happened.

Tamayo is Muzan's first experience where he comes to realize there are other exceptions to the world, too. Other than Muzan. And the thought makes him - he's not sure what it's actually called, but it feels like an ugly (and freeing) feeling.

It begins like this: Muzan is wandering around Japan again. He's in some random town, like all the other ones, and he's around some other people on this one busy road. In the western calendar it would be sometime in the 18th century; he can't remember what year it was like in the old calendar.

So there he is, again, minding his own business. And he hears - er, sees - a woman being turned away from a travelling doctor with a pitiful expression and he thinks it's one of those situations again isn't it.

And he's right. Because he sees her face and all at once, he empathizes. (That used to be me.)

They talk for a bit after he approaches her, and she says she has a husband and children and a disease that will kill her, and she can't find a cure, and that desperation reminds him of the doctor all those years ago, and Muzan when he was sick and looking for a cure, and-

He offers her a solution.

She readily accepts, and he doesn't think she listens when he's explaining the whole meaning behind being a demon, but she's persistent and he ends up giving her some of his precious blood.

The next night he comes back to see how it went (he's curious, did enjoy herself, did she-)-

...He finds corpses everywhere.

It stinks of blood and flesh.

And Tamayo is there, seething, and she's saying he killed her family and most of the people in this town, which is stupid because the last time he ate human was what, a year ago? Humans are so tasteless. He rarely eats anymore.

She screams at him, seething, and it takes some impressive willpower to stand there and listen to her continuous screaming.

...hey. You do realize you drank my blood while knowing something like this could happen, right? The drinking my blood thing should've already been suspicious enough.

And he can hear all her thoughts aimed at him, and then she screams his name which is pretty stupid because she's going to die now-

But she doesn't.

And isn't that surprising?

He doesn't know how she managed it, yet she does, and in a fit of what is assumed to be rage or despair she flung herself towards him, a gross growl erupting from her, and he sends her back away from him with a punch.

She's weak. Of course she is, especially when compared to him. (Muzan is literally the strongest demon. That's irrefutable, and there's no point arguing it.)

Muzan sighs and walks up to her body lying on the floor, and in her eyes there is something he distinctly recognizes as a wild mix of emotions. He ponders killing her because if she's just going to do this massacre thing again then she's going to get killed by the demon slayers, and might as well kill her now or whatever since she's going to die anyways and she's being rather annoying.

Then he considers the fact that she's still alive, and decides to leave her be. Maybe she'll find a way to be an exception to the sun, and he can absorb her later on. So he goes. With some advice left behind, of course.

"You have all the time in the world now," he says. "Get your bearings. Find a reason to live. Or die."

That's how the world works.

He hears her cursing him in her head, and he really wishes humans were smarter than that (she asked him for it, and now she curses him for it, which is rather stupid)-

She didn't really deserve to be a demon, did she?

(A mistake on his part, but one that sprouted positive results.)

(Sometime later he hears about her and her apprentice, and he wonders, but he doesn't think much of it. Besides, he's halfway across the country and she's not quite immune to the sun.)