About Rengoku Being Hard of Hearing (Spoilers)

So! There’s a bit of fanon circling around for Kyoujurou, mostly on twitter, that suspects Kyoujurou is most likely hearing impaired/hard of hearing. This is because of the first part released from his gaiden- spoilers ahead!

In the illustrations, we see Kyoujurou’s very first mission as a slayer. Exciting, but troubling! He comes across a demon who has a dangerous flute, and if Kyoujurou were to hear the flute, it would do something along the lines of bursting his innards or rendering him immobile- something drastic like that. Kyoujurou realizes this, so he slaps his hands against his ears before he can hear the tune.

The whole reason that he defeats the demon is because of two very important key factors- Kyoujurou slaps his hands against his ears so hard that he bursts his eardrums and temporarily goes deaf from the impact, and he reads sign language from his fallen comrades scattered on the ground.

The fact that Kyoujurou bursts his eardrums leads to some connections being made in the fandom. It’s a known fact that Kyoujurou is passionate, but he is also loud. He speaks in a booming manner, and he always seems to keep up that loud, thundering energy. It’s part of his charm, but- as fans have been speculating, there may be another reason for this behavior. It may be that the trauma his eardrums faced on his first mission had lasting effects, making Kyoujurou hard of hearing, at least to some extent. So it may mean that he speaks louder just so he can hear himself clearly.

This is where the other key factor comes in. We don’t know why Kyoujurou knows sign language or how he managed to learn it, but he knows it well enough to read probably poorly made, broken signs from half-dead slayers. Being hard of hearing doesn’t just mean that you have trouble hearing yourself, it means you have trouble hearing everything around you, and Kyoujurou hasn’t shown any signs of not being able to hear his surroundings in that way. But. He knows sign language.

A huge part of sign language is not just signing with your hands, but it’s speaking, too. Most anyone you meet who signs is either speaking aloud while they sign or mouthing the words they’re saying with their hands- it’s a part of the language. Expression is also another huge factor in sign language- saying/mouthing the words and using your expressions is half the language (and we also know that Kyoujurou is a very expressive person). So my theory is this:

Kyoujurou is fast and observant. I think the reason that he never shows any hinderance in his hearing capabilities is the fact that when he’s talking with others, he’s doing his best to hear them and he’s reading their lips as well.

This is the more headcanon-esque part of my post. My belief is that Kyoujurou most likely always has his eyes wide and locked onto others while they speak. It fits his character to believe he’s like that. But I think that, if we had the opportunity to know Kyoujurou further and see him more in the series, we may have seen this headcanon come to life (besides the evidence in manga where he’s constantly moving his head back and forth to respond to the appropriate person), and we would see what living with this handicap was like while being a demon slayer. It’s very possible that if him being hard of hearing was true, he would be unfortunately susceptible to surprise attacks and have difficulty fighting with multiple demons at a time because of the fact that he can’t hear his surroundings very well. It would even be interesting to see if Kyoujurou possibly knew about the Transparent World or if he would’ve been able to learn it and use it to his advantage in battle.

This is all just speculation, though, but it’s very interesting to think about and consider. If anything, it makes Kyoujurou Rengoku more admirable. He’d most likely be the type of person who never told anyone about his handicap at all- but again, that’s just an idea. KNY does an amazing job with backstories and expressing trauma’s and hidden meanings, so I don’t think it’s completely out of line for fans to adopt the idea that Kyoujurou was hard of hearing somewhat. Personally, I love the idea, since I suffer from tinnitus and one of my ears has worse hearing than the other. The idea that a character I adore might have been living through that same thing is a nice thought, at the very least.

Anyways lmao rip we’ll never know!