/jp/ - Otaku Culture

If I'd thought that things were complicated before, they had only become doubly so now. Lady Kasen had numbly stumbled over to the wall and slid down to the floor, trying and failing to keep her tears in. I was still staring the direction that the arm had disappeared down, and Reimu looked completely torn between going after the arm and going over to Lady Kasen. "Well." Reimu finally said to me. "I don't think that's how any of us saw this going." Considering I'd been halfway convinced that I was going to die, that was an understatement. "Kasen?" Reimu asked, taking a step toward the hermit. She didn't respond. "Do we - Should I...?" I felt somewhat lost, but I knew that we probably shouldn't let the arm out of our sight. Even if she did tell the truth when she had agreed to stay in Lady Kasen's senkai, she could still be doing anything. "Okay, you look for the arm. I'll..." Reimu looked back at Lady Kasen and breathed in heavily. "I'll...do something. Just, er, take care. We'll meet up in a bit." She clapped me on the shoulder and I did the same, then we split up.

I headed back out through the same door that the arm had taken. We were on one of the higher floors of the dojo, and I couldn't know exactly where the arm had gone, so I took to a light jog through the corridors to see if I could spot her. She didn't seem to be on the current floor, but I could hear some sort of commotion happening on the ground floor, so I thundered down the stairs, wondering what I would do when I even caught her.

When I ended up jumping straight down the last flight of stairs, I found myself stumbling to a halt and blinking in confusion, my mouth hanging open.

The arm was on the floor, having been knocked over if the disarray she was in was anything to go by. On top of her, tail swinging back and forth, sat Houso, and he was licking her face. Several of Lady Kasen's other pets surrounded her, including both Kanda and Kume, and I even saw Mukou flit between them. The arm seemed to be making a half-hearted, ineffectual effort to make Houso stop, and muttering some token words of displeasure, but she didn't seem entirely displeased by what was happening either. "No, don't - Stop that..." She pleaded, which did nothing to prevent Houso from continuing. "I'm not your master, you know? You're not- No, don't pull on the chains..." She directed this plea to one of Lady Kasen's wolves, who had taken hold of the chain hanging from the arm's wrist and began tugging on it slightly, seemingly in an attempt to garner her attention. After a moment, and with the slightest hints of embarrassment starting to bloom on her face, the arm reached out and began to scratch the wolf behind the ears.

I watched this silently, wondering how we'd gotten things so wrong. For all the talk about how dangerous the arm was, what I was staring at now was almost...cute. It made me almost forget that the arm had apparently killed so many people in the past, or that it had attacked Reimu and nearly dragged her to death in Avici.

Finally, the arm took notice of my presence. "...I told you that I don't lie, so now I am going to tell you that if you tell anyone what you just witnessed, I will personally tear your limbs from your body and beat you to death with them. I'll also make like a proper oni and devour you whole." She stopped scratching the wolf behind the ears, who whined in disappointment at the loss of attention. Then, she lifted up the massive, heavy tiger as if it weighed little more than manjuu and placed him beside her. She hopped to her feet and stalked over to me. "Understood?" I slowly nodded and covered my mouth in the hopes of making sure that the message got across. It wasn't hard to feel a little intimidated by the arm. She was taller than I was, which by itself was no easy feat, and I could feel the raw strength contained in her body just by standing here. Her eyes were far sharper than Lady Kasen's, and they glimmered with something deep down, which I couldn't settle between being intelligence or some sort of passion, like a passion for violence.

"Good." The arm nodded once, then turned and hopped over all the animals, who were clearly hoping for another petting session. I made sure to provide each of them with a brush or a stroke as I passed through, following the arm toward the exit. It seemed that Lady Kasen's pets could sense...Well, Lady Kasen, from the arm, and it had them confused.

I decided that I'd better not stick around in case I did something that I wasn't sure I would regret. Instead, I headed back into my room, got dressed again, then headed directly for the kitchens. I drank as much water as I was physically capable of holding in and stepped out of the dojo and onto the peak of the mountain just in time to catch the morning sunrise. There, I was surprised to see Lady Kasen sitting cross-legged on the edge of the mountain with a pensive expression on her face. More concerningly, next to her was the box. The oni arm, the one that had almost eaten me. In Lady Kasen's bandaged hand was the sake box she carried, and I could see the empty bottle next to her that I was certain was a different one to the one we had been drinking the night before. I wondered why she had the arm. Was it because she was worried that it would get free again? Or was it, as I had my suspicions of, that the arm was in fact, Lady Kasen's herself? Already, I could see that the seals I had hastily slapped onto it looked just the slightest bit worn, but I hoped that it meant that we still had some time before they broke again. She hadn't noticed me yet, and I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to surprise her, since that seemed like a recipe for pain. Instead, I slowly backed away, over to the door to the dojo, then made a loud show of opening and closing it which caught Lady Kasen's attention. She twisted round to see me, then nodded. I moved to join her, though I didn't sit down.

"It's funny, the things you only think about in the small hours of the morning." Lady Kasen murmured. "Does the arm seek freedom out of hunger? Rage for being imprisoned?" She tipped the sake box into her mouth, then dropped it beside her. "Loneliness?" I crossed my arms and stared out over the mountain tops. The sky was lit up a brilliant pink, with streaky orange beginning to mix with it and behind it all, the first hints of brilliant blue. Perhaps the arm wants to know how its owner is doing, I speculated. "...Perhaps. She might be comprised of malice, but she's still...a pers- No, a part of the oni." I wasn't particularly great with this sort of philosophical question. That was the realm of real hermits like Lady Kasen, or great thinkers. I was neither. Still, I could tell that this was something that Lady Kasen was seriously thinking about, and I felt like I owed her enough to give her a real answer. Still, the way she spoke about the arm had a reverence that I couldn't imagine being said about someone else. It was really pushing my oni suspicions to the forefront, though I didn't find myself too afraid since Lady Kasen herself had been kind to me.

I'd spent enough time sitting and thinking about things to myself, so I knew that it could be helpful, but I had some plans of my own. I told Lady Kasen that I would be going to the entrance to the caves, to try and work my way through some of the panic attacks I was having. She was silent for a moment, staring at me, and I finally said that I would be careful not to go too far in, and to turn straight back if I felt too stressed. Finally, she nodded. "Be careful." She told me, turning back to the sunrise. "Make sure you're back here tonight. I'll be changing the access route tomorrow." I told her that I would make certain, then I turned and left Lady Kasen's senkai.

It took me a matter of minutes to find the road back down toward the village. For a moment, I wondered if the ground would still be too soggy from the storm for me to sneak around the village, but then I remembered that according to Marisa and Reisen's reports, the majority of the rabbits at Eientei had left, and it was likely that no one was watching the village anymore. Happily, I decided, this meant that I could go directly through the village to reach the caves now, and I decided quickly to take that route.

It was still early morning, so I only saw some farmers out in their fields, though they didn't pay much attention to me. Once I was in the village proper, I decided to walk along the canal where I could see the slowly lightening sky reflecting in the water. Typically, there were children playing along here, but it was still too early for them to be out, so I was left alone to my thoughts. For a moment, I thought I spotted someone with red hair, but when I looked, no one was there. I wondered how that waitress was. Perhaps I would be able to stop there for some tea on the way back.

The only point of contention I found in the village was when I turned onto the street where my house was. The last time I had been here was before...

I was walking. The house was right next to me. I could see the door I had stepped through thousands of times. I could see...