/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I couldn't find Lady Kasen or the sealed arm when I woke up the next morning, which made me very concerned. She wasn't in her room, she wasn't in the kitchen, and she wasn't even outside. I didn't know where she had gone, and I hoped that she wasn't considering releasing the arm. Or at least, not without some serious protection. Reimu's seals had helped prevent it from fully awakening before, but that didn't mean it was foolproof, or that it would be enough to seal the arm if it was fully awakened. Hopefully, I thought, Lady Kasen was at the Shrine where Reimu could come up with a plan to deal with it.

I, meanwhile, wanted to get back to the caves. I'd made fairly good progress yesterday, and I'd even met Nai who had told me what Yamame was up to, and I wanted to get through the caves and to her as soon as I could. If anything, to make her stop being so harsh on Nai, who was just trying to help. I stumbled to my feet, and then sneezed. That...wasn't a good sign. My limbs felt heavy, like moving them was taking all the strength on Heaven and Earth. There was an ache in the back of my head, too. Not quite pain, but pressure.

Assuming that I had just slept wrong, and it would fade soon enough, I pulled on some clothes, splashed some water on my face to wake me up, and headed out from Lady Kasen's senkai onto the mountain. I shivered as soon as I stepped outside and felt the wind buffeting me. It may not have been a storm, but Autumn wasn't the kind of place for thin clothing. That, I reflected, was an even more important reason to reach Yamame. She had clothes. Warm clothes.

Even though it didn't look that cold, I was shivering heavily by the time I made it to the caves, and I was starting to think that I shouldn't have come at all. Clearly, I had made an error of judgement. I hadn't slept wrong. Instead, I had put myself in a situation that made me panic, that made me heart beat many times its normal speed, that left me trembling and exhausted. And I had done it multiple times, sometimes heading back in the rain. How stupid was that? And now, even with that peach affecting my system, I felt ill. Reimu would have slapped me silly if she'd been here. As it was, I was violently shivering and standing at the entrance to the cave that caused this problem. I knew that I would never make it up the mountain to the dojo in this condition, which left three choices. I could try and go to the Hakurei Shrine, where Reimu owed me a favour for taking care of her while she was sick. I could try and go...through the caves. Reach Yamame's house and hope she could help me somehow. I couldn't exactly go to Eirin, but Yamame could take me to the Shrine herself, and it would save me going back through the cold winds.

There was another option that I didn't want to consider. I was close to the village. I was close to my house. Except, there was a youkai in my house. She had expressed a desire to suck up my blood. It was likely that she wouldn't succeed, but I couldn't see it helping any of my traumas.
Another burst of wind hit me, and I knew that I had to make a decision quickly. If the mountain was too far, I somehow doubted that the Shrine would be any easier to reach, and just thinking about going to my house in the village had my stomach doing flips so bad that I was certain I was about to vomit.

That really only left one option, which was almost as bad if not worse.

I edged forward through the entrance of the tunnel, as far ahead as I could stomach, and then I tentatively called out Nai's name. I was expecting that Yamame was still holed in in her house, annoyed and frustrated, but the younger spider had met me here yesterday, so I hoped that she would be around again.