/jp/ - Otaku Culture

"She does make us wait for her to get changed a lot, doesn't she?" Reimu commented. I rubbed my chin and commented that it was probably because Reimu and I wore the same outfits most of the time. "I can't decide if that's a good thing or not." She complained. Me neither, I said with a slight shrug.

Finally, she stepped out. She'd gone for a sweater, black, and a long pair of trousers which were brown. Gold bands crisscrossed the trousers at her thighs, and a single band encircled each calf. It was a fairly good approximation of her regular outfit, I thought. She stopped to pull on a pair of thick boots that were sitting near the door, and while she did so, I sidled up next to her. She looked up at me for a moment with a raised eyebrow. I was curious if she'd put anything on underneath the sweater because it was likely to be pretty warm in Lady Kasen's senkai. After a moment, she just raised the other eyebrow too, so I crouched down and slid a finger down from her neck, then pulled the edge of the sweater from her skin. Yes, I saw. There was a T-shirt underneath, the sort of thing that I imagined was Lady Hecatia's input.

"Happy?" She murmured to me, and I nodded, letting the sweater fall back into place. "It's not one of her designs, I should say. More like - She was sort of an inspiration for it, but - Yeah, you get what I'm saying." Slowly, I nodded, unsure that I actually did. With her shoes properly laced, I reached out my hands and felt her grab them, then pulled her up to her feet. "Thanks." She said once I let her go. "It's good to have you use all that muscle for something."

"Are you two done flirting?" Reimu finally asked from the door, her gohei tapping some sort of rhythm against the ground. "Can't you save it for when you're married?" I didn't see the harm in doing it both before and after. "I see the self-harm in having to watch it all the time." Reimu replied, rolling her eyes. "Come on, let's go. Tired of standing around." She turned and headed straight out of the door. There was a sort of restless energy to her, I thought, and we probably had been stalling too long.

"Let's go before I decide I need to keep working." Yamame told me, stepping out after her. Shaking my head, I followed them, locking the door behind me. "So - She's going to merge with her other half, if I got that right?" She asked Reimu as we walked.

"Right." Reimu replied shortly. She seemed to have a lot of nervous energy built up, and it was coming out in very short, very blunt answers. I was a little nervous myself, but mostly keeping it to myself.

"And...That's the real her? Kasen Ibaraki? Ibaraki-douji?" Yamame's questioning was speeding up a little, so I poked her in the back and reminded her to breathe between questions. "What are you, my mother?" She whined, sticking her tongue out at me. "Fine - Yes, sorry. I'm calm." She raised her hands in surrender.
Once we were out of the caves - It had been about five days since I'd last left, for an interview with Shameimaru, so my eyes needed to adjust - Reimu turned to me. "I know the current path, so..." Sighing, I raised my arms so that she could lift me up into the air. "Thanks." She said, sounding much more sincere about it than I'd expected. "Sorry - I'm just..." No, I replied. I got it. She was worried. "Yeah." She finally said shortly, lifting me up.

This all went fine until we were nearly up to Lady Kasen's senkai on the mountain. Roughly right around then, Yamame paused. "Is - What's going on up there?" She asked, pointing upward.

Curiously, Reimu and I looked up. "Is that...Whoa!" Reimu was suddenly forced to dodge to the side as something blurred past. "What the hell?" She growled, looking down to follow the path of the blurry thing. "Oh, you can't be serious. How the hell were you right!?" The last part was directed at me, and I couldn't help but laugh in spite of myself.

Because, just about to crash into the snow and rock on the side of the mountain, was Tenshi Hinanawi.

The crash was loud, and sent a shockwave that knocked us back in the air slightly. "Is - What - How-" Yamame wasn't getting anywhere with it, apparently, so I told Reimu that we'd better go down and see if Tenshi was okay. "But - From all the way up there? Where was she?" Heaven, probably, I said with a shrug. "H-Heaven!?" Yamame repeated incredulously, staring at me like she wasn't sure if I was joking or not.

"I - I know she's a celestial, or was a celestial - But-" Yamame was forced to stop talking after Reimu looked down into the pit that Tenshi's impromptu crash had created.

"Hey!" She yelled down, her voice bouncing off of the mountain. Weird, I thought, because I didn't think there were any yamabiko here. "What're you doing down there!?"

do you like your yams in different outfits?