/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I did shut up and stared up at the ceiling. My heart was doing all sorts of flips and now that the initial shock had faded, I was starting to feel a very warm feeling in my chest. It may have been said in the heat of the moment, but still. She'd said she loved me. And now there was a smile on my face that I couldn't seem to get rid of. "You look like a teenager." Reimu said, looking at me through narrowed eyes. "Better sort yourself out, though. It's a little goofy." I looked over at her and she squeezed her eyes shut and went to massaging her temples. "Ouch, ouch...Oni sake..." She didn't seem in danger of throwing up, which was good. "Hang on, I saw something. What was..." Opening her eyes again, she looked me over. "Wait, there..." And she poked my shoulder, which was, truthfully, where I was hoping she wouldn't look. "That's new. Isn't it? You didn't have that in Eientei. Nor when..." She trailed off, but I knew that she was definitely thinking of when she had barged in on Yamame and I.

Before she could say anything more, Yamame staggered back in the room, wiping at her mouth. "Oh, I feel rough..." She looked over at me and then at Reimu. After a moment of slight indecision, she came back to the side of the bed. "Sorry. Um, thanks. For telling me the way." I tried to put all sudden declarations from my mind and instead told her that I was happy to. "Ah-ha!" Yamame loudly exclaimed, then cut herself off by groaning and clutching her head. On my other side, I saw Reimu do the same. "Oh, um, Hakurei - Um, Reimu."

With tired and annoyed eyes, Reimu looked up. "What? Kuro-" I poked her in the side, and she jolted. "Y-Yamame. What is it, Yamame?"

"Do you know why..." Yamame trailed off and did that fidgeting thing she did when she was nervous about saying something. "Um, why - No, sorry, just forget-"

"Why..." Reimu looked a little bit uncomfortable too, and I suspected that I knew the reason why. "We - Ahem, were-"

"Yes!" Yamame cried. "I mean, um, no. Or, uh..." Unable to bear the awkwardness anymore, I finally said that they'd both been asleep when they'd started cuddling each other, so nothing weird had happened last night. Either way, they still both looked pretty embarrassed and awkward about it, so I figured that just letting them get over it was probably for the best. Happily, they both got distracted soon.

Unhappily, it was when they instead looked at my shoulder. "That's what I was looking at." Yamame said, venturing onto the bed and pushing me flat on my back so I couldn't get away. "His shoulder."

"I saw that too..." Reimu muttered, poking the new marks. "It's fresh. Really fresh." I supposed that I should have expected as much from a professional youkai exterminator. "Like, 'today' fresh..." I opened my mouth. "Shut up, I'm busy." The wound hadn't scarred over yet, but it was well on its way, which I assumed was some sort of peach-assisted faster healing for physical injuries.

"And...Hang on, it's bite marks. Fresh bite marks?" Yamame was now right next to Reimu, and both of them seemed to have forgotten their earlier awkwardness. "And they're..." Yamame swiped a finger across the marks, smiling apologetically when I grumbled about the pain. She looked into space pensively for a moment. "Oni..." She muttered quietly. I asked her what she meant. "Oh, um...Just that I've seen plenty of oni bites in my time. That's oni."

"Oni?" Reimu asked sharply. "Like, the kind that there's four of in this dojo?" I finally interjected and said that I could simply explain what had happened, if they thought it was worth worrying about, which I didn't think it was. "I'll be the judge of that." So finally, I explained the conversation that I had been witness to between Lady Kasen and Ibaraki-douji's arm, and the demonstrative biting that had been part of that.

"Wait, is that why you said..." Yamame frowned, clambered down from the bed, and picked up the sweater that I'd dropped on the floor. "Gah!" She shouted, then clutched at her head again. "This!?" She spun and threw her arm straight out, the sweater dangling from her hand. I could already see the bloodstain and the ragged holes left by Raki's teeth. "This is why you said it needed repairing? Because an oni took a bite out of you!?" Her voice was starting to rise in pitch, and I felt a little bad for being so flippant about it. I'd been scared until Raki had been positively gentle about it and limited herself to the one bite. "And - And you're fine with it?" I said that she was working as hard to change herself as Yamame had worked to change herself, so I had to be supportive, and somehow, I believed her. She stared at me for a moment, then stomped back over to me. "Reimu, could you give us a minute?"

"A min- Oh, um, sure." Reimu mumbled, rolling out of the bed with a long sigh. "I could do with the bathroom too." She glanced back at us as she left, though a weak smile did cross her face.