/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Once I'd entered the room, Reisen pressed something behind me, and the lights in the room came on at once. For a moment, I was disorientated, but then I figured that it must have been some sort of moon thing, because there didn't seem to actually be any visible light sources. It wasn't like Yamame's home, either. There were no hanging bulbs in the room. Instead, there were bookshelves against the walls and a chair, plush and comfortable looking, almost like the ones I'd seen at Eientei. The chair was situated in front of another piece of furniture, this one long enough to lie down on. I supposed that this was how the counselling sessions worked. "Lie down there." Reisen told me, her voice completely emotionless. "I'll be along with my Master." She turned and took a step, then looked back at me for a moment. I thought for a moment that she was about to say something, but instead she shook her head and disappeared into the darkness.

I stared at the long chair-slash-bed-thing and decided that I didn't feel comfortable lying down just yet, so I crossed the room and looked at the bookshelf instead. Aside from the books, there were a number of smaller items. A thin piece of card that I found to be a child's drawing. The simple text on it said 'thank you for saving my daddy!'. I wasn't sure what had possessed Doctor Yagokoro to keep it, since it didn't seem like the sort of emotional thing she cared about. I slipped it back into the bookshelf and looked over the books themselves. Most of the titles were incomprehensible to me. Not as if I couldn't understand them - though I doubted that I could - but whatever script they were written in was completely impossible to understand. I couldn't even recognize it as letters, and I started to wonder if there was something more to the language than simply words.

"Old Lunarian." The voice - sharp, but cold and with so few inflections to it that it could not be her native tongue - sent shivers through me. I spun, then forced my teeth together before my pounding heard could force me to cry out. Eirin Yagokoro stood in the doorframe, her eyes that same cold, watery grey, with no emotions behind them. New were the barest traces of shadows under her eyes, and I wondered what had made Reisen's exhaustion so much more pronounced. Her arms were behind her back, but her uniform looked just slightly crumpled, like it had been creased and left that way. "That script will never be understandable to humans." The doctor stepped into the room properly. "I understand that you wish to speak with me." I couldn't help but shrink back a step, and as I nodded, I found that I'd moved the book I was holding in front of me as if it was a shield

"Counselling, is it?" I nodded again, then found the strength to turn and place the book back on the shelf. Reimu and the others would come for me. "It was very irresponsible of you to stop coming to your appointments." Doctor Yagokoro said to me with that same tone of voice. I tried to keep my voice steady and said that I had stopped feeling any pain. "The point is to complete the full course. The patient's word carries less weight in matters of physical medicine. You should have kept coming." Inwardly, I tried not to scream that I'd stopped coming because she was stealing my memories like the blood she was also stealing from me. Instead, I nodded and said that I was sorry. "No matter. Lie down." Doctor Yagokoro indicated the soft-looking bench, and I knew I couldn't say no on this occasion. Feeling like I'd be naked without it, I left my coat on, and wrapped it around me as I first sat, then lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I heard Doctor Yagokoro take the seat next to me and pick up a clipboard that had been lying in the chair. "What is it you wish to talk about?" She asked, still sounding completely emotionless.