Chapter 96

No Matter How Many Lives, Part 1 (まれわっても) is the ninety-sixth chapter of Koyoharu Gotōge's Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Summary
Daki and Gyutaro continue arguing as their heads begin to disintegrate, she starts chastising her brother for being useless and questions if they're even related. Gyutaro grows angry at her comments and calls her a weakling, even regretting protecting her in the first place. He loses his temper and goes on to spew hateful remarks such as mentioning that his life would've been better without her and wishing that she had never been born, causing Daki's eyes to well up with tears. Tanjiro intervenes and covers Gyutaro's mouth, stating that he doesn't mean what he's saying and that they shouldn't spend their final moments fighting with each other.

Daki begins to wail at Tanjiro out of frustration, yelling at him to leave them alone and stop lecturing them. Daki's head reaches its last phases of disintegration and she cries out for her brother to save her, saying that she doesn't want to die. Gyutaro hopelessly watches as her head dissolves away while still calling out him, before he impulsively calls out to her by her birth name, Ume.

As he reaches his final moments, Gyutaro recalls his past as a human born in the Kirimise to a prostitute mother. Before she died from syphilis, his mother tried to kill him many times, even after his younger sister was born. Due to his appearance and lack of hygiene, the young Gyutaro was bullied and detested by everyone he met. Things began to change after his sister was born, as her beauty dismissed his inferiority complex, and he used his ugliness, plus his newfound fighting skills, to become an efficient debt collector.

However, the good fortune would not last for the siblings. When Ume turned 13, she blinded a samurai with a comb, and was subsequently burned alive for her crime. Having been away on his job at the time, Gyutaro returned to find her barely alive, and hugged her as she clinged to life. He cursed the gods to return his sister and for treating them cruelly, before he is attacked by the same samurai. The samurai slashes Gyutaro from behind, allowing him to bleed out at he chats with one of the brothel managers.

The manager brazingly calls Gyutaro a nuisance and a brute for harassing the locals of the district, before expressing her pity at having lost Ume as a courtesan. Before the samurai could finish him off, Gyutaro viciously kills the manager, and berates the samurai for having a lavish lifestyle before gruesomely killing him as well. As Gyutaro tried to find help for him and his sister, no one would help them due to their reputation and circumstances. He trudges on through the street until he ultimately collapses and bleeds out on the floor, as snow begins to fall. The siblings lay on the floor dying, until they are discovered by one of the Upper Ranks, who offers to turn them into Demons. Gyutaro adamantly proclaims that he would become a Demon again, no matter how many times he is reborn, wanting to always bring fear as "Gyutaro the Debt Collector".

Characters in Order of Appearance

 * Gyutaro
 * Daki
 * Tanjiro Kamado
 * Nezuko Kamado
 * Doma

Events

 * Daki disintegrates.
 * Daki and Gyutaro's backstory is told.

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