/jp/ - Otaku Culture

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4 >>44437040 (3&4) >>/data/jp/img/0445/50/1694088027969245.png
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(10 - Part 1) >>/data/jp/img/0449/36/1698587659569048.png
(10 - Part 2) >>/data/jp/img/0449/36/1698587725286314.png
11 >>45089529
(11 - Part 1) see picrel
(11 - Part 2) see post below

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I just thought about it.
What do shinigami taste like? Yamame could find a "weird" taste in anon's mouth after Komachi kissed him but what does that mean? Does Komachi taste like death or something? What about other youkai? Do Yamame's kisses taste like something?

>>45218444
>What do shinigami taste like?
I'll find out and tell you (if I survive)

>>45218444
komachi tastes like this
I think yamame would be a light and sweet taste too, to match her personality

"So, is it like...Work? Does she just want you as a trophy or something? Someone to show off?" Reimu had her gohei resting over her shoulders and her arms themselves resting upon the gohei. It might have been comfortable for her, but it was slightly less comfortable to know that if she suddenly turned, I'd be the one taking a gohei swipe to the back of the head. "You're sure she's not just trying to steal you from Yamame, right?"

If she was, it would be a pretty weird way to go about it, since she'd be stealing me from Yamame while simultaneously working with Yamame in a different body. I couldn't say I'd ever heard of something like that happening before. So, I said, no. I didn't think she was trying to steal me from Yamame, nor did I think she was trying to show me off to anyone. It had sounded like a completely legitimate offer, even if it was a bit unexpected and confusing.

We were somewhere in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. It was the middle of the day, and the sun was shining down, though it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, warm. It did lend a crisp feel to the surroundings, though, which was nice in keeping me alert. Supposedly, we were on our way to Eientei, but really, I'd just wanted to talk to Reimu on her own, which I hadn't managed to do for a while, or at least since before Eientei. So, I'd suggested we stop for a bit at a clearing somewhere in the forest, with a couple rocks and a small pond. I felt...reasonably sure that I knew how to get back on the path to Eientei. Probably. And even if I didn't, Reimu could always drag me up into the sky above the Bamboo Forest so that we knew where we were.

I frowned and stared out into the bamboo. "Is it even a real offer?" I looked over at Reimu curiously. "I mean, not to sound rude, but...The offer came to you in a dream. How do you know it's even a real thing?" I recalled the strange experience I'd had following Marisa's sudden Master Spark in Eientei. Doremy Sweet and a ballroom, strange, fleetingly-seen figures that seemed to change from one moment to the next, never quite constant enough to pin down. And while I'd been talking to Doremy Sweet, I'd seen her. Lady Hecatia Lapislazuli, her hair blonde and her smile just tempting enough to draw me in. I'd danced with her, and she'd offered me a job.

Still frowning, I looked over at Reimu. She'd said plenty of things that related to reality, and Doremy Sweet had been there, so it couldn't have just been a normal dream. "I guess that sounds real...I'm really not sure how I feel about you being visited by weird youkai in your dreams. How am I supposed to do anything if they attacked you in a dream?" I had once had Lady Kasen tell me about the time that Reimu had thrown a tantrum in a dream to force Doremy Sweet to accompany her to the waking world, so I imagined that Reimu would find a way. Still, she looked a little uncomfortable. "But...What does she want you to do? What does 'be her representative' mean?" I really had no idea. Maybe I'd have to work with people in Hell. Or maybe people in different worlds entirely. I really had no idea. "That's why I'm worried. What if she comes up to you one day and asks you to stop being human? What'll you say then?"

I paused, looking over at Reimu. She had moved the gohei to rest between her knees and she had a tight grip on it. I moved from where I'd been staring off into the bamboo and sat down next to Reimu, then pulled her into a hug. "I don't want you to do that. To stop being human. I'd have to-" She clamped her mouth shut, but I had a fairly good idea of what her next words were going to be. She'd have to kill me. "Being with and loving a youkai is one thing. There's, um, precedent, I guess. But if you give up your humanity, then I'll - I'll..." I hugged Reimu tighter and began to stroke her hair, then told her that I wasn't about to let that happen without a fight. I liked being me, even with all the bad things I'd gone through.

It took a few minutes to get Reimu to calm down, and she sat back with a shaky breath. "Sorry. It's, er, not like me to get all emotional like that." I waved a hand and told her that it was fine. "I'm supposed to be looking out for you, that's all. Can't do that if you're off in Hell or the Dream World or who-knows-where, doing who-knows-what." Hopefully, I said, by then I'd be able to take care of myself. And besides, I didn't think I'd have to leave my current life, even if I did accept Lady Hecatia's offer. She had a body in the normal world, anyway.

"Just...Make sure you learn all of this stuff before you accept any weird employment offers, please. I don't want anything weird happening only after you accept the offer." I told Reimu that I would make sure to learn all I possibly could prior to accepting any offers. Obviously, I'd even decline it if it involved not seeing Yamame regularly. "Phew." Reimu breathed out deeply. "Okay, I feel a bit better. Let's just, um, go to Eientei before you tell me something else worrying." I waited until Reimu got to her feet, then casually mentioned that I might be going to a youkai gathering. The only sound was her gohei clattering to the floor. "You're - What?"

Briefly, after Reimu had picked up her gohei and as we walked, I recounted my conversation with Kagerou, and my previous conversation with Wakasagihime, about the Grassroots Youkai Network and, somewhat briefly, my desire to try and introduce Yamame to it. I didn't want to force her or anything like that, but I wanted her to get to know some people outside of her family and work obligations, and this seemed like a good idea. Reimu stared at me speechlessly for a moment, then shook her head. "Yes, I suppose that's very...You. Next week? That's, uh...Ooh, that'll be a bit close to the new moon. It'll be dark. Very dark. Are they planning to have lights?" I was more surprised that Reimu hadn't immediately shot down the idea. "Oh, I'm sure I can't stop you. And I'm also sure that you'll be at least reasonably indestructible with that peach inside you. Plus, anyone hurting you is going to get Yamame's wrath, aren't they?" I...supposed that was true. I hadn't really thought of it that way. "Like I keep telling you, just be careful, please. Kagerou's nice enough, I suppose, and Wakasagihime is docile, so I don't think you'll be in too much danger." I ignored the 'I hope' she mumbled under her breath.

Eventually, though still a little too soon in my opinion, we were at Eientei. I wasn't entirely ready to be here, if I was being honest with myself, but I was able to draw some comfort from the fact that Reimu was with me. Unconsciously, I found myself taking her hand, if only for some comfort, as I stared at the entrance to Eientei's clinic, which was darker inside compared to the brightness of the day, lending the whole thing a slightly sinister vibe. Unlike before, there were rabbits milling around outside and inside, some just small animals and some full youkai. After a few moments, I spotted - Or rather, heard, and then spotted - a rabbit I recognized.

"I mean, you can't pound mochi with those weak arms~ The sight of my mallet gets- Oh, my, my, my, what's this?" Tewi Inaba cut her singing short as she rounded the corner and spot us. "If it isn't he who got experimented on and she whole got me to crush my boss's head!"

"Tewi." Reimu muttered, though she didn’t sound too upset. I wondered if that was because she’d been able to work with Tewi during the Eientei Investigation rather than against her like with Reisen. "Is Eirin in?" She seemed a little stiff.

"When isn't she in?" Tewi replied lazily. "Yeah, yeah...Don't worry, either. She's still a bit high-strung, but she's definitely not the complete psycho she was a couple weeks ago." That was a relief, at least, and I relaxed slightly. "Don't think she's busy right now, either. Well, not that busy. C'mon, c'mon~" She said the last part in a slightly singsong-like voice, then beckoned Reimu and I into Eientei.

Behind a counter just inside the clinic was Reisen. "Welcome to Eientei, what can I-" It sounded like a speech she'd given several times before, but Reisen did naturally sound pretty uninterested and bored when humans were involved, so I couldn't say for sure. "Oh. It's you." That was starting to become a nickname for me, I remarked. "What do you want?" She hadn't sounded particularly welcoming before, but she was downright frosty now. "Here to attack us again?"

"Oh, shut it, you dumb bootlicker." Tewi lazily replied, waving a hand dismissively. "We're seeing Eirin." She beckoned Reimu and I to follow with her other hand, and while Reisen looked furious, she didn't stop us. Once we were a few hallways away and hopefully out of earshot, Tewi continued. "She's still mad at me for killing Eirin, like killing her even means anything..."

"Only youkai could talk like that." Reimu muttered to me. Or Hourai Immortals, I whispered back. "Yeah, but they're basically youkai anyway, so..." Tewi coughed, purposely and loudly to shut us up. "Oh, uh, no offense." Even I could tell that was a lie, but Tewi didn't look like she cared much. “I mean, you did kill her boss, right? She’s probably got a point.” Tewi looked over her shoulder at us, frowned, but didn’t say anything. Still, I found myself glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. Even though I could see daylight through the slats up at the top of the walls to let air circulate, Eientei felt a little gloomy and it reminded me uncomfortably of my bad dreams.

"Boss lady~!" Tewi called. "Eirin~! Got a patient for you~!" She looked entirely unconcerned, and I tried to relax, but I wasn't doing a very good job. Finally, we came to a door, and I could see down the corridor, where scorch marks covered the walls. This, I thought, was the part of Eientei where Eirin had given chase to Tenshi and I with massive outbursts of danmaku. "We've been working on scrubbing all of that stuff off." Tewi said, noticing where I was looking. "Well, I say working. More like ditching Reisen so she has to do it herself. It's like a game. I find some work, I trick Reisen into doing it. Then, Eirin scolds her for taking too long. It's a win-win situation."

"What does Reisen win?" Reimu asked, her confusion clear on her face. I probably looked perpetually confused considering the amount of youkai who spoke utter nonsense that I happened to run into. At least Yamame was nice and understanding.

"Oh, she doesn't. I win twice." Tewi cheerfully stated, giving us a big smile.

"...Right. So, uh, Eirin?" Reimu looked about ready to get the surreal conversation over with.

"Yeah, yeah..." Tewi stuck a thumb at the door next to us. "Get in there and wait. I'm...assuming you're not planning on leaving him alone." She directed that part to Reimu.

"Not a chance." Her reply was short and blunt, but made me feel far more relaxed. Tewi shrugged, not looking particularly bothered, then pointed us to the door once more.

"Eirin's with a patient, since the clinic's back open, so she might be a few minutes." Tewi told us, idly playing with her huge mallet by bouncing it between her shoulders and spinning it across her arms. I backed away slightly before she could hit me with it, which then reminded me of the last thing I’d seen it covered in, which hadn’t been a very pleasant sight and in fact, made me feel a little nauseous.

"What kind of patient? Youkai attack?" Reimu asked, slightly quickly and with some intensity.

"Eh, nah. Just some guy from the human village who fell in a rice paddy after it rained. Banged his head and nearly drowned before someone pulled him out. They made him come for a check-up regardless. Nothing special." To be honest, that sounded like my brand of bad luck, but I didn't say anything. Reimu nodded slowly, so Tewi shrugged and gestured for us to enter the room, which I did after taking a moment to force down my nervousness. “Hey.” Tewi called, just before we could enter. “Thanks. For helping to sort out Eirin.” I told her that while it wasn’t exactly an experience I was eager to repeat, I was happy to have helped. Then, I turned back to the door. I knew it wasn't anything special. It was just a talking session. Yet, I couldn't exactly shake off the feeling of nervousness since it had gone the way it had the last time.

But the room was empty. It was the same room as before, the one with the bench to lay on, the bookshelf stacked full of unreadable scripts, and the strange few personal effects that Eirin had kept for whatever reasons she had. I found myself crossing over to the bookshelf again, just as I had done last time. Some things had changed. Aside from the presence of two additional chairs, a small table, and some sort of artwork upon the walls, there was more...clutter, I supposed, across the bookshelf. The last time, there had been little besides that one card with the child's drawing inside, but now there were various random objects taking up the shelves. The card was still there, but it was displayed slightly more prominently now. Next to it sat what I could only assume was some sort of moon object, because I had absolutely no idea what it was or what it did.

Below, on the next shelf, were what I could only define as various items that Eirin had taken an interest in. Things like a small haniwa figure, a small rod that I recognized as a representation of an onbashira, the kind that I'd seen at the Moriya Shrine, and even a small shard of rock that looked like it had come from one of Tenshi's keystones. And next to that was a prominently displayed piece of paper. I couldn't read it, because it was still written in that unreadable Lunarian script, but it looked quite official and serious.

"My diploma - Proof of my abilities in the field of medicine, you could say." I spun, and I saw Reimu raise her gohei into a fighting stance, but after a moment, we both relaxed. Eirin looked better. Not a hair out of place, her outfit pristine and perfect, without a wrinkle in sight. Her face was as stoic as always, but that slight tightness and stress that had covered it on my last visit had disappeared. "In truth," She continued, stepping into the room with her hands behind her back, "I quite literally wrote the majority of the medical textbooks that would be used to earn that diploma, so one could argue that I didn't, perhaps, earn it the way a normal person would. I felt, however, that it would serve as some visual evidence that I am not, in fact, a quack living in the woods." Her cold, grey eyes bore down into me. "You came back." She said, plainly. I slowly said that I'd agreed to think about it, and I'd come to a decision.

Reimu stomped over to stand beside me. "Not alone. I'm not leaving you alone in a room with him." She seemed to be feeling very protective, now. It was nice, I supposed.

"No, I can see that." If Eirin was surprised, she didn't show it. She looked back at me. "If I am to continue discussing the matters we began to discuss in our last session, I must ask that you confirm Miss Hakurei's presence here to be in accordance with your wishes." I nodded, then said that I could trust her with anything. "Understood." Eirin strode over to the bookshelf, slightly shifting some of the objects upon it. "You haven't taken your coat off." She commented. "Feel free to do so." I told her that it was cold, so I was happy to leave it on for the moment. "Is that so?" She asked, pulling a clipboard from between two books, with a piece of paper already attached to it. She looked down, then wrote something on it. "Will you lay down?" She asked me.

I looked at Reimu. "It's your session." She said quietly. "I'll still be right here." That made me feel a little more relaxed, so I traipsed over to the bench, then lay down, wrapping my coat around me. It felt like a layer of comfort in the still slightly uncomfortable environment. After a moment, Eirin took the chair next to me. "So, um, what happens now?" Reimu asked.

"This is his session, Reimu." Eirin said, though her tone had become just slightly less cold. "I do not force talk upon patients unless they engage me first. It is up to him to start us off. If he wants to sit in silence, well, that's what we shall do." Reimu looked a little subdued at that, and she settled down and took a seat in the other chair, her gohei laid out across her lap.

Leaving me to begin my second session at Eientei.

Now i'm really starting to believe she did the Russian sleeping experiment on herself

I guess we can ask her how she's been doing

>>45220124
>"What do you want?" She hadn't sounded particularly welcoming before, but she was downright frosty now. "Here to attack us again?"
Perhaps my memory is frosty (or I'm a dumb speedreader), but wasn't it her plan to have Anon ask for counselling as a trojan horse? Ultimately, they managed to snap Eirin out of her funk, so I'm not entirely sure why she holds a grudge. Does she think things got out of hand, or was she a triple agent on Psycho-Eirin's side all along?

>>45220130
Tewi negra...

>>45221341
Maybe she genuinelly believe they could talk things out. And she was right at end.

>>45221341
Reisen probably hadn't expected to actually lose the fight, I bet she thought she was tricking a bunch of stupid earthlings right into her trap and to get head pats from Eirin for doing such a good job. Instead Eirin got her head smashed in.
Truly a dumb rabbit only good for sex appeal.

>>45220118
>I felt...reasonably sure that I knew how to get back on the path to Eientei. Probably. And even if I didn't, Reimu could always drag me up into the sky above the Bamboo Forest so that we knew where we were.
Don't, Anon! You'll get biten!

>>45221341
She's probably mad because it devolved into a big fight, and reimu already speculated that she'd pick eirin over the others if it came down to it
Plus they had to kill eirin to resolve things, even though she comes back, and she's probably got some misplaced anger because tewi is tricking her into cleaning the place up by herself

>>45222327
Oh no!

>>45220118
>I paused, looking over at Reimu. She had moved the gohei to rest between her knees and she had a tight grip on it. I moved from where I'd been staring off into the bamboo and sat down next to Reimu, then pulled her into a hug. "I don't want you to do that. To stop being human. I'd have to-" She clamped her mouth shut, but I had a fairly good idea of what her next words were going to be. She'd have to kill me. "Being with and loving a youkai is one thing. There's, um, precedent, I guess. But if you give up your humanity, then I'll - I'll..." I hugged Reimu tighter and began to stroke her hair, then told her that I wasn't about to let that happen without a fight. I liked being me, even with all the bad things I'd gone through.
I know that writeanon isn't to blame for this in any way, but hell, I still can't get over the silliness of this 'rule' that ZUN made up.
The protagonist could become a hermit/Celestial, a Hourai immortal, or even some form of ghost/phantom after death, and nobody would bat an eye. But turning into yet another run-of-the-mill youkai is a big no-no for villagers because that's somehow more sinful than any other conversion.
It only makes any sense if humans must relinquish their villager status before rejecting their humanity. If not, why else would Reimu allow Marisa to research magic at her level of expertise? She is stated to be a potential youkai magician candidate in canon, too.

>>45223489
>But turning into yet another run-of-the-mill youkai is a big no-no for villagers because that's somehow more sinful than any other conversion.
Because youkai require a fine balance of fear and belief to main themselves and humans turning into them would disrupt the balance, its all explained in FS.
>If not, why else would Reimu allow Marisa to research magic at her level of expertise?
Akyuu does mention that for 'humans living in the village youkai must be enemies', so you could say that as someone no longer living in the village it is more lax. As far as Reimu goes however, its not so subtly shown that she is keeping an eye on Marisa and if she specifically tries to become a youkai, something that requires special steps to do, she'll cut her down as well. Hell, she almost killed Kosuzu just as easily and she liked her just as much as Marisa.

>>45224342
I know how it works. I simply think that the specifics of the rule are rather vague. Not to mention that PCB Alice isn't stated to be from Makai and she gets a free pass in every possible way.
>As far as Reimu goes however, its not so subtly shown that she is keeping an eye on Marisa and if she specifically tries to become a youkai
Not to sound pedantic, but do you have any examples of this being the case? I genuinely don't remember it.

>>45224831

>>45224831
As far as Alice goes it could be said that she was there previously or was a foreigner/outsider given how she is 100% not an ex-villager even if her whole Makai origin is up in the air.
>>45224878
thanks for posting it anon, I was having to hunt it down

>>45224342
Reimu would probably feel like she should Marisa, but I think Kasen, Okina, or Yukari would intervene, they keep too close an eye on the girls for something like that too go unoticed.
And a emotionally distraught Reimu who killed Marisa sounds like something they would want to prevent. Not to mention someone Marisa is on good terms with like Byakuren might also intervene.

>>45224878
>>45224910
Skeptical anon here. Thank you, I failed to notice that.
I just wonder, wouldn't youkai magicians also qualify as jinyou according to this very broad definition? We know that FT's method wasn't really the same one that humans use to become magicians.

>>45225167
Byakuren was probably grandfathered in, and we don't know about Alice's circumstances, all the other youkai magicians we know of are born members of the magician species, like how flan isn't a child turned vampire, she's a child member of the vampire species.

>>45224930
Reimu isn't psychopathic enough to do this to Marisa

>>45225258
>flan isn't a child turned vampire, she's a child member of the vampire species
...huh?

>>45225258
I don't believe I heard the sources of those claims before. Byakuren was never a villager though and its hard to call her a youkai proper

>>45225284
he is saying that flan was born a vampire and not that she became one

>>45225300
yes, I can tell that much
as far as I'm aware there is no source that states this

>>45225284
She was born a vampire. It's not outright stated, but considering she's lived her entire life up to EoSD akd 495 years in the basement and never met humans before Reimu and Marisa, she was probably born a vampire.

>>45225298
>and its hard to call her a youkai proper
I believe that when a human lives to much he become a youkai (like rabbits)
Detective Satori practically confirmed that Mokou is no longer human

>>45225324
Byakuren researched life extension magica that was taboo for Buddhists leading to her immortality, not that she's a youkai
Mokou is no longer a true human yes, she's a hourai immortal.
There isn't any real evidence that long lived humans turn into youkai, like Seiga and Miko are still a true humans despite being close to 1000 years old because that's how hermits work. Though Miko is admittedly a special case.

we need a touhou lore thread

>>45225298
It's mentioned in PMiSS, although I do admit the authenticity of this is up to debate as Akyuu, who admits to being very biased, wrote this.
But at the very least I do not think this section is obviously biased and is mostly trustworthy.
For patchy herself, she's never hinted at being a human and people think of her as a youkai, although I do admit she could have become a magician before coming to Gensokyo and meeting Flan as well.
Since Flan already exclude Sakaya from the category of human , like other characters do, due to her being a weirdo.

>>45225446
ZUN confirmed that patchouli was born as a magician in an interview
>Since Flan already exclude Sakaya from the category of human , like other characters do, due to her being a weirdo.
where

>>45225501
Well i'm assuming Flan excludes Sakya from being a human, she says herself in EoSD she never met any humans before the heroines, but she has probably met Sakuya since she prepares the food and would probably be the one to deliver it.
People in universe also comment on Sakaya being a weirdo and occasionally doubt her being a human. That said her being a weirdon does not make her a human, it just makes other people doubt her humanity.
Maybe Flan excludes her for some other reason we don't know, but we have no idea what that might be.

>>45225446
I find this information to be extremely jarring. For all the youkai magicians that Gensokyo is said to have, you'd think Reimu would be shown enforcing this so-called balance of Gensokyo (as in, with actual executions) more often.
ZUN sometimes feels like making his stories more dramatic than the rest of his content, and it doesn't mesh that well with the overall whimsical tone of the series.
It's like Pokemon game stories vs Pokedex entries all over again.

>>45225580
Yeah the major rectons are the number of youkai hunter, magicians, and youkai being less antagonistic to the point Reimu, who's constantly bored, has enough time to micro manage specific human-youkai conflicts.
I think ZUN really tries to force Reimu into situations and ends up retconing stuff that didn't need to be changed.

>>45224878
Sluguzu...
I wonder if anon will go to Slugunaan and possibly meet Akyuu there who might have some very pointed questions to Anon about what (and who) he's been doing.
Gensokyo is such a rich setting, will writeanon ever run out of possible material?

The session was mostly a recounting of the events that had occurred in the previous session before everything had spiralled out of control. I'd found myself very glad of Reimu's presence once I got around to describing the events that had killed my parents, because she was able to take over the explanation for a moment or two. I hadn't taken much time to think about it truly, so I hadn't realised that it still caused me pain deep down. To have my family stolen from me like that. "And How did that make you feel? Deep down, inside?" Eirin asked me, her tone still a strange mix of her usual coldness and something slightly warmer I was silent for a few moments. Powerless, I eventually settled on. It made me feel powerless, like I had no control over whether I lived or died. "These sorts of situations can have that effect, yes. It's partly why there was an uptick in youkai exterminators in the time immediately following the incident we are speaking of. After a few years, it died back down. You were not the only one to lose a loved one in that night, of course. Plenty tried to take matters into their own hands. Gain back some of the control they felt they had lost." Eirin seemed to know a lot, considering how private Eientei seemed to be. "We may have kept to ourselves in those days, but remaining uninformed would not be productive for anyone."

"I remember that." Reimu said, looking up from where she'd been sat cross-legged on her chair with her eyes closed. "I'd be rescuing a would-be youkai exterminator every few days." She frowned, rubbing absent-mindedly at her head. "Yeah, it wasn't a good time. For anyone, really. Even the youkai weren't enjoying themselves after that." For a moment, I saw through the veil and realised that Reimu had some similarly haunting memories of that time, and then she blinked and squeezed her eyes shut, and it all disappeared again. "Well, that's why the Spell Card Rules came into existence." She said, shrugging.

I looked up at the ceiling. I supposed, after some thought, that perhaps that had been part of why I'd gone to Marisa in the first place. Oh, I'd forgotten by then, but perhaps there was some element of wanting control back to it. "And do you think you found that? That sense of control?" Eirin asked me, putting another set of marks on her clipboard. I supposed that I had, in a way. After a while, at least, because the first few dates that I'd gone on had ended up...Well, I supposed Eirin remembered those well enough. "Yes, I suppose so." Eirin sounded a little stiff, but I supposed that I couldn't blame her. Or rather, I absolutely could blame her, since it had resulted in the start of the whole Eientei Investigation and general horrors I'd experienced.

Eirin placed the clipboard down with a sigh. "I fear that we aren't going to make meaningful progress without...Clearing the air somewhat." I looked over at her with narrowed eyes, and I heard Reimu's clothing shift as she picked up her gohei. "This is supposed to be your session, but..." She rubbed at her forehead tiredly. "You still mistrust me, and I cannot blame you for doing so. Therefore..." She crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. "Please ask me any questions you feel would help to assuage this mistrust."

I stared for a moment, then tentatively asked her what exactly had made her pick me to begin experimenting on. "I was not lying when I spoke to you on our last encounter. I knew that you were something strange, and I wanted to understand you. My methods were, perhaps, questionable." But was that all? She'd seen me before then, too, and she'd not thought anything of me back then. "You didn't become a person of interest until after that first encounter. As I told you, I began to notice that you were attracting youkai." And then, why had she taken it as far as she had? Was it just me? "It was just you." She confirmed, then paused for a moment. "There's a question you want to ask. I'd like you to ask it now."

I did have a question like that, but I had been struggling to get it out. Why...All of it? Why had she gone so far? Why had she gone so far that even the other rabbits had gotten worried about sticking around her? Even disregarding myself, I couldn't understand why she had pushed herself so far. "This subject is... a source of some embarrassment." Eirin began, looking away from me. I rarely saw her display much emotion, so even a small display like this was worth taking note of. "I have already explained to you what drove me." She glanced over at Reimu for a split second. "I won't be repeating it. But, as part of that, I devised a medicine of my own making. It eliminated the need for sleep." My eyes widened because I couldn't imagine doing something like that. Sleep was nice. I liked sleep too much for that. Plus, Doremy Sweet would probably be mad at me, and while I wasn’t sure what the Ruler of Dreams would do to me if she was upset with me, I wasn’t all that keen to find out either.

"That sounds like a very poorly thought-out idea." Reimu muttered.

"It was, as a matter of fact." Eirin said, sounding a little annoyed at herself. "I was already in a poor mindset when I devised it. It didn't eliminate the need for sleep. What it actually did was make the brain not feel the need, despite getting weaker and weaker. Do you know what effects sleep deprivation has on the brain?" I certainly knew how I felt when I was tired, but I didn't exactly know for certain. "After twenty-four hours: Difficulty in concentrating, high irritability, tremors, reduced coordination and more. Being what I am, the usual timescale does not apply to me, but it is important for me to explain these symptoms." Eirin looked at Reimu and I intensely, and I got the impression that she was trying to make something very clear to us.

"After forty-eight hours, the body enters extreme sleep deprivation. At this point, your brain will forcibly make you have microsleeps, which are small periods of sleep, up to thirty seconds long. You will experience extreme periods of stress. High anxiety, irritability, and extreme fatigue. But, perhaps most importantly at this stage, you will begin to hallucinate. See things that aren't there; hear things that aren't real. Here, Eirin was beginning to look a little bit like she wasn't entirely present in the room either. Like whatever she was staring at and thinking about, it wasn't in the here and now.

"After seventy-two hours, sleep deprivation begins to have a severe effect on your ability to think, and you will be experiencing depersonalization. At this point, you won't be able to tell what's real and what's a hallucination." This was starting to sound a little horrifying. "By the ninety-sixth hour, reality will no longer make sense. This is called Sleep Deprivation Psychosis." Eirin's eyes weren't so emotionless now. They looked, in fact, a little haunted, in a way that actually made me a bit concerned. "It takes me longer to feel the effects, but I was using that medicine for a long time. Each day, my ability to make good decisions became worse. My inability to recognize what was happening grew. And the medicine prevented me from feeling microsleeps."

Eirin shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. "It is a miracle of the body that I seemed lucid at all. The medicine kept me from falling into full delirium, but all the other effects crept up on me silently. By the time you," And she looked at both myself and Reimu here, "Confronted me, I was probably no more intelligent than the average new-born youkai." She could have fooled me. "Well - And I don't intend anything offensive - I am extremely intelligent regularly. It takes a long time for me to reach the depths that I did." She looked at Reimu. "Thank you."

"You - Huh?" Reimu blankly replied.

"For fetching Tewi. For having me killed. Udonge might still be upset, but it was a decision that needed to be made. It refreshed me enough to clear the medicine from my system." Eirin had looked far better the next morning, when I'd woken up from being cooked by a Master Spark. "Then, I could understand what was happening properly. The need to sleep kicked in properly."

"Oh. Uh, you're welcome?" Reimu said, looking a little confused. I, however, felt like I was starting to understand better. Eirin had been right about my mistrust of her, but hearing more of her reasoning and the problems that she had been going through was starting to help.

"There was something else." Eirin said, then paused. "I was ashamed, but I was also vain and arrogant. I wanted to do everything myself. Prove that I could. Prove that I could atone for my sins on my own terms." She looked tired again. Really tired, but I supposed that not sleeping for as long as she had probably caused a large backlog. "I'm still hopeful that I can succeed. But now, I hope that I will be able to ask for your help on a more equal ground." Eirin had been careful to dance around some of the more personal parts of what she had confessed to me during our first session, and I imagined that I'd have to dance around Reimu's requests for that information in turn, but it was a start. Strangely, I found that I did feel a bit less mistrustful of Eirin now. Oh, I still didn't want to be alone with her, and I definitely wouldn't forget again, but it was slightly better now.

"Okay, so, uh..." Reimu had her arms crossed and looked more than a little confused. "What now?"

Eirin looked up at a clock on the wall. "There's typically more patients at this time of day. I fear that I will need to bring this session to a close now, but I want you to come back here." She directed the last part to me. I nodded, but continued my stipulation that I would not be attending alone. "Of course." Eirin nodded, standing, and placing her clipboard in a drawer. "It is likely that you will be best served in coming to these sessions when you feel that you need them." She told me, which I agreed with. Oftentimes, I couldn't even begin to predict what I would be doing on a certain day, so it was good to have that flexibility.

Exiting the room, Eirin stopped me at the door. Reimu, who had exited ahead of me, turned, her face contorting into a snarl and her gohei already raised, but I raised my hands and she halted. "If you feel that you wish to contribute to one of the projects we discussed..." I said that I'd consider it and tell her during one of my sessions unless something got in the way. "Understood." She let me leave, and I patted Reimu on the shoulder while she suspiciously stared at Eirin. Eirin, meanwhile, brushed past us and down the corridor. "I will escort you out, if you'd care to follow me." She said, looking over her shoulder at us. Before Reimu could throw out a pointless protest, I grabbed her free hand and began to drag her along, and before we knew it, we were at the entrance to the clinic once more. "I will see you," Eirin told me, pulling a pair of thin, see-through gloves from a small box, "At your next session." I told her that I'd see her there, and she nodded once, then turned on her hell and disappeared back into the clinic, leaving Reimu and I standing at the entrance, and Reisen glaring at us from behind the counter.

And I supposed that Reimu hadn't been able to yell at anyone for a while, because she looked over at Reisen, then clicked her tongue in annoyance. "What?" She asked, and Reisen didn't answer, but looked away. "What?" Reimu repeated, more sharply. "I'm not in the mood for your stupid ignoring act, so answer me and let's sort this out now."

"You attacked my home." Reisen finally said, sullenly. "Do you know how long I've spent scrubbing scorch makes from the walls? All the work I had to do to fix the doors?" Personally, I thought that I'd gone through worse than fixing two doors and scrubbing some walls, but I let Reimu field this one.

"And?" Reimu asked, looking somewhat uninterested.

"It's your fault that-" Reisen tried.

"No, it isn't." Reimu replied, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

"You brought the Celestial who caused it to get so out of hand. You're responsible for all of the damage!" Reisen tried again.

"No, I'm not." Reimu replied again.

"Yes!" Reisen looked frustrated.

"No."

"Yes! You set up the whole attack! It's your fault!" Reisen seemed very annoyed now, even if it didn't seem entirely deserved.

"No, it's not. It's your fault." Reimu said, holding her gohei over her shoulder. "You sent us the note. You told us to get into Eientei."

"I had to send it!"

"And we used it." Reimu didn't really look like she understood what Reisen's problem was. "That's your fault." Reisen stared at Reimu like she was still struggling to properly vocalize what she was trying to say.

"Eirin was treating me far more harshly than normal-"

"So what?" Reimu shrugged lazily, though I could tell that she was thinking at least a little about what she was saying.

"I was scared and wanted things back the way they were!"

"So does everyone." Reimu continued to look very uninterested. "You just kicked things off, and we finished them. And hey, look at that. Things look like they're back to normal now. What's your problem, seriously?"

"All the other rabbits left and I was stuck here. It wasn't fair and-" Reimu finally got fed up at that point.

"Oh, it wasn't fair! Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realise that it wasn't fair!" She slammed the butt of her gohei into the floor and leant on it. "Well, the Shrine has a leaky roof and unlike him," She pointed at me, "I don't have my own personal seamstress, but I'm so sorry that you had to scrub some walls!" She rolled her eyes. "These things have happened, Reisen. They are facts. You're just upset that someone finally did something about it because you were too busy panicking about consequences. Yeah, maybe Tenshi should have exercised more restraint, and maybe Tewi shouldn't have broken down the door, but you don't get to cry about fairness when your boss experimented on him without his consent." Reimu, clearly done with the conversation, turned to the door. "And she's not holding any ill will, so you need to get over yourself."

With Reisen angrily staring at her, Reimu stomped outside, and after shooting Reisen one more look, I joined her as we began to head down the path out of Eientei. After a moment, I asked Reimu if she was okay. "Fine." She muttered, in a very 'I'm-not-fine' way. So, I asked again. "Yes. No. Maybe. It's fine. Not your problem." Her being upset was my problem. "Look, I just...I was just a bit frustrated, okay?" I tried once more to ask her what was wrong, but she pushed me away this time. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it." I had a suspicion, but I didn't voice it, mostly because I wasn't sure what I could do about it. I had Yamame. Marisa and Tenshi had struck up some sort of friendship-and-slash-or-relationship, and even Lady Kasen had...Well, herself. Reimu was still mostly alone at the Shrine apart from when Aunn was around. It seemed like she was just lonely.

I spent the time until we left the Bamboo Forest of the Lost thinking, and found myself unable to come up with a solution. Before I knew it, we were back in the village, and Reimu was muttering complaints to me about the village kids being rude. I had probably been one of those once, but I imagined that Reimu had never had the luxury of being an obnoxious punk with her friends in the village as a child, which only made me feel a little more unsettled. Then, as if no time had passed at all, Reimu was leading me in the direction of the caves, and despite my desire to say something, I couldn't seem to find the right words. And then, It was too late. "Right, er, I guess I'll see you in a while." Reimu awkwardly said, looking a little unsure about what she was going to do now. "Take care." I stared at her for a moment, then wrapped her in another hug, possibly my tightest one yet. I was trying to put the things I couldn't quite phrase into it. After a few moments, Reimu pushed me off of her and stepped back. "Um, yes. Er, thanks." And she lifted into the air and disappeared into the distance, leaving me standing there worrying about her.

I sighed heavily and trudged into the caves, hoping that hugging Yamame for a few hours would make me feel better. I’d have to try and talk to someone about Reimu, and I wasn’t sure who’d be the most suitable, but I knew that I could trust Yamame to talk with me about it.

Still, at least I had the Grassroots Youkai Network meeting to look forward to. …As long as I could convince Yamame to attend it.

Reimoo...

Good time as any for Marisa to offer her services, maybe her pay can be figuring out who hooked up with anon.

I used to really dislike Reimu when I first got into Touhou since I thought she was an all-powerful, self-absorbed jackass with no sympathy and a superiority complex. I eventually came around on her by viewing her more as a character to find entertaining than like as a person, sort of like if a mary sue was a sitcom protagonist. She's one of, if not the most powerful and influential beings in Gensokyo, whom many would bow down to. But despite her position and being surrounded by so many people, she's otherwise a dorky loser who doesn't have much else and is only genuinely close to a handful of others.

Writeanon manages to synthesize the many (often contradictory) facets of Reimu shown throughout Touhou canon and add in the emotional depth that I wish she had. The poor lass deserves to enjoyee her lifetime.

Perhaps when Tenshi has to uphold her end of her bargain, Anon can stick around and help out too. Of course Tenshi would be happy, but more importantly, I'm sure it would make Reimu's week.

>>45230873
I think it would be interesting, if there were more male characters in Touhou.

>>45230453
Reimu needs to be bullied more, hope she stays alone.
We already have enough 'risa abuse, we need more 'mu abuse!

>>45232823
>We already have enough 'risa abuse
No such thing. >>45217874

>>45232823
'Mu bully is NOT allowed

>>45233812
Unlike 'risa, 'mu is an actually serial murderer in cannon.
She deserves the bullying.

>>45233864
marisa aborts sentient youkai before they even get a chance to learn what not to do in gensokyo, so she's not much better
she never deserved tenko

>>45233864
>>45233918
It is entirely justified to murder youkai on sight

>>45233918
No silly hat = not a person

>>45233918
Poor yooks. That could have been a bear wife with humongous tits if it was given a chance to grow.

Isn't the solution to Reimu's loneliness obvious?

>>45238663
Putting her on trial for her crimes and then summary execution?
Captcha:00KRJP

>>45238663

I want to see what writeanon is going to do with this new reimu thing (possible new arc?) it is implied that reimu needs a boyfriend, but there are no males in gensokyo...

>>45239194
Don't worry Yamame and anon will fix that in 9 months

>>45239194
I don't think it's necessarily a boyfriend, but just a new close friend
maybe if yukari got off her ass and stopped kidnapping anon to have dinner with him and wow him with pretty sights (definitely not a date why would you even think that) she could hang out with reimu while she's all alone at the shrine

>>45239204
Poor Reimu's going to have to compete for that child's attention with several hundred other aunts. But I really like this idea of a close bond between aunt and nephew/niece to help fill that void of loneliness in her life.
...Oh, I just realized what you meant by that. God damn it.

>>45239226
>I don't think it's necessarily a boyfriend, but just a new close friend
I agree, if she needs to have a boyfriend to be happy, that would undermine the whole found family thing. I predict Anon himself will try and make more of an effort to spend more time with Reimu, in addition to whomever else may more regularly be able to spend time with her.

>>45239334
I mean there's Kozusu and clown piece and as far as i know Remilia never stopped liking her, it's not like the girl is all by herself.

>>45239742
>>45239742
Fairies aren't people, even Lampads like clown don't count, and Ko has a single iq dedicated to books.
They can hardly be considered company.

>>45230979
There is one other male out there

>>45239742
She has friends and stuff, its just that there's no one that would consistently be there for her like kronkAnon would as someone close enough to be considered family.
Marisa is the closest she has to that but their friendship is different and I doubt Reimu can let herself be weak around her in the same way.

>>45239864
I don't know i always believed those two had moments where they are crying on each other's arms.

>>45239896
ehh, even going through just canon material, I always got the feeling that reimu holds marisa at arm's length a little
like, they're friends and marisa tells reimu stuff, but you don't often see reimu tell marisa much on a personal level, even in recent stuff like lotus eaters where reimu won't properly explain why she won't exterminate miyoi

>>45239896
I haven't started on CDS or Lotus but I don't remember that in any of the printworks so far.
In fact I don't really remember her doing anything like really confiding in others to any real degree. Even Kosuzu, Akyuu, and Marisa are all kept at a certain length

>>45239204
>>45239334
Do we really need another nephew-kun incident? Wasn't Elly enough?

>>45239964
I was just kidding man, don't worry.

>>45239964
I was not kidding man, worry

>>45239964
Since spiders give birth hundreds of eggs, anon's sons will make company to every lonely aunt he befriended in his journey.

>>45239194
What kind of man should the 'mu get? A scared cat that needs to be protected from the youkai? A hard worker? A nerd studying magic like Marisa? A badass youkai hunter?

>>45240079
When you think about it Rinnosuke is most of those things.

>>45240079
the gap hag can just abduct an outsider to be her hubby
she can even make sure they're of good stock

>>45240094
He is a nerd, hard worker and needs to be protected from youkai, hags to be more specific.


Honestly i would like to see him in more fics.

If only Yukari cared about her daughter's lovelife half as much as Yuyuko cares for her daughter's

"A meeting?" Yamame asked me, looking up from her desk in her bedroom. "For what?"

She'd been working on something relentlessly. It had started the day I'd returned from Eientei, worrying about Reimu, and struggling to focus on things. Yamame, continuing to be lovely to me, had been happy to give me as many hugs as I'd needed to stop worrying for a while, and then she'd made me have a nap because I 'still looked like passing out'. When I'd woken up, she'd already been at the desk in her room, a large spread of sheets across the desk. Personally, I wondered whether or not the desk she was using was too small to contain all of the work, so I'd asked her if she wouldn't be better off using the desk in the workshop. "But that's my desk for seamstress stuff." She'd told me, as if it was the plainest thing in the world. "You have to compartmentalize these things. Otherwise, you feel like you're never at ease when you're at that desk, and it gets hard to keep what material is for what project in mind." I blankly stared at her, then nodded. "See? I knew you'd understand." She smiled in that self-satisfied way that I loved, so I had stood up and walked straight to her desk, crouched down, and kissed her until she couldn't remember where she lived, let alone which desk was for what project.

It had been three days since then, and she was still working. She'd explained what she was doing for me at least twice, and I still couldn't really say that I understood it. It was apparently some sort of preliminary work for a new project that Yamame and her family would be starting up after the Hot Spring Town restoration was finished, though I wondered if they weren't jumping ahead a little, since it seemed like Suika crashing through the keystone had led to a lot of arguing and as a result, had slowed the project down even further. The previous day, after another excruciating clothes fitting session, and a less excruciating reversal where Yamame had modelled several outfits herself, Reiko had arrived at Yamame's house to complain for several hours about the project, the amount it had slowed down by, and how much money she wanted to charge for it. The complaining session had gone on long enough that I'd ended up just making dinner for Reiko as well. She'd been singing my praises on the way out, though, so I could imagine worse fates.

Either way, I'd finally decided to broach the subject of the Grassroots Youkai Network with Yamame, after taking a few days to think about it. I was being careful about it, because I knew that if I approached it the wrong way, Yamame was likely to refuse and swear up and down that she had too much work to even think about going to a meeting for socializing. In the end, I'd began by saying that I'd heard about a meeting. Thus, leading to the current situation. "Or, uh, about what?" Yamame asked, looking back to her desk. She'd piled it up with sketches and sketches, which she was moving around randomly. "Wait, you heard about this in the human village?" I nodded, then told her that while I'd been with Tenshi, Marisa and Reimu, I'd heard about it from a youkai wolf who'd lost a bet and had to work at the café. "A youk- What?" Yamame turned to me properly, now frowning. "There was a youkai wolf in the village? Working? Because she - she lost a bet?" I hadn't really thought about how ridiculous it sounded, but yes, that was the case. "That's...Huh. Okay..." She scratched at her head, and I had to force down the desire to play with her hair. "So...What's this meeting she told you about?" I explained that it was supposedly a small gathering of friendlier youkai, who just wanted to live comfortably. I couldn't explain that it was mostly youkai who were considered weak, because I had a feeling Yamame wouldn't much enjoy my implication of her weakness, and I didn't really think she was all that weak anyway. Then, I had a stroke of genius, so I mentioned that I'd met one of the youkai who'd be there before. A freshwater mermaid, known as Wakasagihime. "Oh, I think I've heard of her." Yamame said, turning her chair around to face me, sitting on the edge of the bed. "She lives in the lake, right? The one by the Scarlet Devil Mansion?" I nodded. I'd met her just after the storm, when I'd been feeling cooped up and needed some time alone - a plan that had immediately fallen apart because I'd not actually had any alone time. "Was she nice?" She was very nice, I said. Gentle and polite, and she'd been easy to talk to.

Yamame giggled a bit, then got up from her chair and wandered over, then set next to me. "Keep talking like that, and I might just get jealous..." I laughed a little, then told her that I'd need a couple bricks to the head to wipe all my memories of Yamame before I could fall for anyone else. That got her laughing, too. "Charming." She muttered, falling onto her back and spreading her arms out. "So, what about this Wakasagihime?" I fished around in my trouser pockets, looking for the stone that I'd pulled from the shelf in Yamame's workshop. I lifted it up, trying to catch the glow from the lights in Yamame's room. Yamame didn't get up, but did raise her head slightly. "Ooh." She murmured, looking at the stone. "Pretty..." I explained that Wakasagihime had shown me her collection of stones, but had left this one behind when she'd left, and I'd been meaning to return it ever since, though I'd failed to actually make it over to the lake any time recently. I'd hoped to have a chance on the way to Lady Kasen's senkai, but hadn't managed it, then I'd hoped to have a chance on the way out of Lady Kasen's senkai, but I'd managed to forget it, and it had just kept on going until now.

So, I wanted to take the stone back to her, and since I knew that there was that meeting happening, I thought it would be interesting to go and see it. And here was the delicate bit, because I wanted Yamame to come with me, but I thought that if I asked her normally, she'd refuse. So, I instead said that I wanted to return the stone and see the meeting, but I was a little worried about being attacked by youkai after dark, so I wanted Yamame to come with me. As protection. "Aw, that's just adorable." She said with a smile, leaning up enough to grab my shoulders and drag me backwards until I was also lying on the bed next to her. She wrapped her arms around me, smiling. "You need me to protect you from scary youkai in the middle of the night?"

There was a scary youkai right in front of me, I replied. She gave a mock-gasp. "How rude!" Then she lowered her head and dropped her voice to some sort of almost-gravelly tone, but she couldn't really pull it off because it just wasn't her natural cadence. It instead sounded a little husky, like it did when she was feeling...frisky. "I'll make you fear for your life, little human..." I projected a look of terror on my face, then, with Yamame's arms still wrapped around me, I rolled so that I was on top of her, trapping her underneath me. "Oof!" She cried as I rolled, then she looked up at me with an expression that I was struggling to read. "Er...I'll make you fear for your life...?" I growled at her, asking if she'd come with me. "O-Oh, um..." She looked away slightly, the beginnings of a blush on her face. "...Okay, I'll come." Good, I told her. "Um, I'm thinking that I want to take a break from work, so..." Her voice had taken on that tone again.
I'd never undone the buttons of her shirt so fast.


Four days later, during which little of interest happened apart from my drinking a lot of water, it was approaching evening and Yamame was panicking. "Wait, wait, wait!" She cried as I threw one of her various garments that littered her workshop at her head. "You're just returning that stone, right? We can do that and -Mmph!" The garment sailing at her head cut her off before she could finish, knocking into her and sending her stumbling backwards. Taking the opportunity, I crossed the room and took her hands, looking into her eyes. Relax, I told her. It wouldn't be anything stressful. "I am relaxed!" She insisted. I could already tell she wasn't, because she had a tendency to pull the sleeves of her shirt down repeatedly as if they were riding up her arms when she was stressed, and she was already doing it as soon as I pulled my hands away. I wasn't telling her, because it was quite useful as an indicator.

Gently, I asked her if she was okay. "Yes, I'm - Yes, okay?" I looked at her a little longer. "I'm just...I haven't been out to the surface since we came back from Miss Ibaraki's home, and I haven't been out with just you since we got, um, kidnapped." Ah. I could see how that would make her nervous. I hugged her until I could feel that she'd calmed down, then told her that what had happened was an uncommon occurrence. Hearn had only been after me, and even then, it had mostly been because she wanted to find out what was happening with Eientei, so I doubted that she'd be asking after me any time soon now that Eientei had been resolved.

A few hurried minutes later, we were leaving, Yamame dressed in a version of her clothes that had thermal layers sewn in for warmth, and me in my coat, turtleneck sweater, trousers and boots. We got about halfway down the cave, then had to turn back when I realised that I'd forgotten the stone that I was returning to Wakasagihime yet again, so by the time we actually managed to leave the caves, the sun had already disappeared below the valley.

It hadn't given way to the moon quite yet, leaving the sky a deep, dark blue that was edging further toward blackness. "Cold." Yamame muttered, absentmindedly pulling at her sleeve. I wrapped my coat around myself, glad that it was so long and warm, though I asked Yamame if she'd really be alright without some sort of coat herself. "Oh, er, yes. If I get too cold, I'll probably just slow up. Keep going and I might fall asleep until I'm warm again. It's just how spiders are." It was a little worrying that Yamame might just pass out, but not overly so, so I nodded and told her to tell me if she felt like she was going to pass out. Then, I took her hand and we began heading across the darkness to pass through the village. I hoped that since it was night, Yamame's youkai nature would escape notice.

Fortunately, the village was quiet. Some people were out, enough to keep us from looking too suspicious, but not enough to make it obvious that we were different. It wasn't too difficult, then, to get from the side of the village that Yamame's home connect to over to the side of the village that leads out through fields where the farmers live, out onto the path away toward the Hakurei Shrine in one direction and the mountain in the other. While we were walking, Yamame and I talked about the Hot Springs Restoration project. "Reiko told me that now, instead of competing over who can lift the whole keystone, they're trying to compete over who can lift the most chunks of keystone, and now they're dragging them all over the place, the bloody fools. Honestly, the oni can be an absolute nightmare!" Yamame griped, repeating a gripe that Reiko had been incapable of keeping herself quiet about when she had come by recently.

The walk was mostly uneventful, apart from one moment when Yamame had paused, then told me to shut my eyes and let her guide me. After she let me open them again, she told me that a group of fairies had been messing with the perception of the path, and they'd probably trick me into walking off a ledge and falling into the Forest of Magic if I wasn't careful. Aside from that, we were able to make good time, and the moon had only just started to appear above the mountains of the surrounding valley as we started to take the twisting path toward the Misty Lake and the Vampire's mansion. Finally, I began to hear the gentle sound of the water splashing, and we rounded the corner where the trees still protected the Misty Lake from view.

Now that I'd seen the monstrous ocean that covered the coast of Australia, the Misty Lake didn't quite awe me in its size like it had in the past, but it was still a beautiful place, and I could already see the moon's reflection upon the surface. "Did they tell you where to meet?" Yamame asked me, and I frowned. No, they hadn't, but I decided to try where I had met Wakasagihime before, near that collection of white rocks that she used as a table and a ways around from the Vampire's mansion. We did have to pass across the front of the mansion to get there, though, and I was surprised to see that the gate guard, Miss Meiling, wasn't present. Instead, there was a group of fairies, all dressed in maid attire and brandishing big, sharp-looking spears. One of them caught me looking and made a threatening gesture, so I just waved politely and sped up my walk slightly. Yamame didn't look particularly threatened, but did seem to find the whole thing a bit curious. Not really directing the question to Yamame specifically, I wondered out loud where she might have gone. "Who?" Yamame immediately replied, then blinked. "Oh, er, there's another gatekeeper, isn't there? Um...Red hair?" I nodded, suppling her name as Meiling. "I think I remember her from when we were working on the mansion. Didn't see her very much, though." She shrugged. "Maybe she's just asleep. I mean, she can't be guarding the place every minute of the day, right?" I supposed so, nodding as we continued past the mansion and across the edge of the Misty Lake.

Then, I finally began to hear something. Talking, a bit of laughter, and the rippling of waves across the surface of the lake. I squeezed Yamame's hand, looking over at her, and she smiled and nodded back, though I still noted a slight hint of panic in her eyes. Personally, I thought that she'd probably built this up in her head to be something nerve-wracking, and I hoped that it wouldn't be so once we got there. And getting closer, I relaxed a little. I could hear Kagerou's voice, and the musical laughter that could only be Wakasagihime. We cleared the last few rocks in the way of the view, and finally laid eyes upon the meeting of the Grassroots Youkai Network.

Wakasagihime floated in the water, her arms resting against the large, flat rock that she'd claimed as her table. Sat at a picnic blanket, a basket in front of her, was Kagerou, who was talking to Wakasagihime about something. She'd wrapped a slightly ragged looking cloak about her shoulders, and her hair awkwardly rose up at the back over the hood. There was someone stood behind her, leaning against one of the other rocks with crossed arms, but I couldn't make out their face. Kagerou had brought a lamp, which sat in the middle of the picnic blanket, and provided a gentle, warm light to the whole thing. Someone else was sat opposite Kagerou with their back to us, hunched over a little and with a lopsided cap over their long, shockingly red hair.

Not wanting to starting anyone into attacking, I loudly cleared my throat, getting everyone's attention, then tentatively called out a greeting. "Ooh!" Wakasagihime replied, sounding a little excited. "It's you, isn't it? Mr. Human?" I heard a startled cry and saw the person leaning against the rock shift. "Hello, hello! Please, come closer!" Yamame and I proceeded closer, until the light lit our faces. "Oh, it feels like it's been ages!" Wakasagihime cheered, beckoning me closer. "I thought you'd forgotten to come and visit me again. Ah, but I've forgotten my manners!" She bowed her head toward Yamame. "My name is Wakasagihime, Miss. May I ask your name?"

Yamame, to her credit, managed to avoid getting tongue-tied. "It's, ah, Yamame Kurodani, Miss Wakasagihime." She bows a little in return, and I look around once more. Kagerou got to her feet, coming over to greet us, and the person against the rock seems to be holding themselves back, while the red-haired girl sitting on the picnic blanket hasn't turned, but was pouring herself some sake from the basket that had sat in front of Kagerou.

"Wow, I wasn't sure if you'd actually come." Kagerou said to me, standing at her full height, which, with her ears sticking up fully, came to about the same height as me. She turned to Yamame, bowing deeply. "Miss Yamame, it's nice to meet you. Your outfit is lovely." She clearly knew what she was doing, because Yamame broke incredibly easily to compliments, and was soon stammering a thank you out as Kagerou engaged her in a talk about clothing. I didn't want to miss out on the chance to return her stone before I inevitably forgot about it again, so I turned to Wakasagihime, only to get pulled back in the other direction by Kagerou. "So, you've met Wakasagihime, and I'm Kagerou, and this-" The figure against the rock that Kagerou was currently pointing to cut her off before she could speak.

"Banki!" She cried, though I noted that her voice didn't seem to quite come from where she was standing, but sounded like it was coming from slightly behind her. "Just call me Banki." She refused to move, but I recognised the name. That was the flying head youkai that Kagerou had mentioned before. I hadn't realised that she was actually coming, and I thought her voice sounded weirdly familiar. Had I been on a date with her, back when I was using Marisa's services? Unable to remember, I simple extended my greetings, then went to ask her about her head, only to realise that there was no good way to phrase that. I was starting to feel a little certain that she didn't have a head. Her upper body was already concealed in shadow, but there was a strange sort of gap where her head should have been, and I couldn't see anything there. Resolving to deal with it like I dealt with most weird youkai in my life, I decided to just ignore it and treat her like anyone else.

I sat down, and the woman with the red hair turned to me, offering me a cup of sake. Yamame followed me down, and then took notice of her. Miss Meiling, the gatekeeper of the Vampire's mansion, raised an eyebrow when I didn't immediately take the cup, but couldn't say anything thanks to the rice cracker she was holding in her mouth. Her uniform was loose, the vest open on a clean, white shirt, and she wore baggy, loose white trousers underneath the skirt around her waist. A black bracelet wrapped around her left wrist. With her free hand, she pulled the rice cracker from her mouth. "Hi." She began. "I think we met before, right? Hong Meiling, but everyone just calls me Meiling." She passed the cup toward me a second time, and I managed to take it this time, and then she turned to Yamame. "You're...familiar."

"Oh, er..." Yamame trailed off. "I was involved in some work on the mansion in the past. It's probably from that. Er, I'm Yamame Kurodani. Nice to meet you."

Yamame seemed fine so far, so I began to relax a little. And I resolved to return Wakasagihime's stone to her before the end of the meeting. I'd definitely make sure not to forget this time. It'd be easy.

oh today was early

>>45240079
I was thinking perhaps an aspiring youkai hunter who asks to be under her tutelage. Given her reputation as THE incident resolver, you won't get a better source of information than straight from the horse's mouth.
Reimu is skeptical at first, but eventually accepts since having a grunt means less work for her and more time to take it easy. Also, it would be nice to have someone else always around at the shrine, especially one who can directly relate to the tribulations she goes through, but she would never admit that.

>>45240079
A hard worker would be a good choice for the mu, she seems like the kind of gal that would really appreciate a househusband(relatively) that could handle most of the chores around the house or go out to work and provide a stable income. On top of that he'd probably also help with her money making schemes and actually make them succeed.

>>45240312
That's just Aunn with a dick.

>>45240325
Aunn is a huge dork and is useless aside from sweeping and guarding the shrine!

Well i certainly wasn't expecting Meiling in this story, gotta collect the last remaining redheads i suppose.

>>45240331
She's shown to be a competent spy, hard worker, and can actually move product unlike the 'mu.

>>45240337
Only Yumemi and Kotohime are left

>>45240359
Orange is a shade of red, that means we'll have to drag in Suzu as well.

>>45240221
>And I resolved to return Wakasagihime's stone to her before the end of the meeting. I'd definitely make sure not to forget this time. It'd be easy.
When he inevitably forgets again, I sure hope Yamame will be the one to remind him to do what they came out all this way for in the first place. That sounds like the type of couple they are, where one forgets about everything important and the other has to keep tabs on it all.

Anyways, interesting choice to put Meiling in a Grassroots meeting; unexpected, but surprisingly fitting. Guess we'll finally get elaboration on what her relation to Kisami is. So which will be grander, the Kurodani-Hong step-cousins reveal or the Banki is Seki reveal?

>>45240359
I seriously wonder how they might fit into this story.

"Well well well, look who finally decided to show his face in town again"
From behind you a smug yet slightly frustrated voice approaches you
"You've been given me a bit of a headache these last couple of weeks"
You tur around to see Kotohime, the self proclaimed law of Gensokyo
"First you get on all of those accidents, then you dissappear one day, nice little guard dog you left at your house by the way i still have bruises because of her, then miss Kogasa files in a dead person with physical traits significantly similar to yours"
She stops to pull a picture out of her coat, it shows you and Yamame going on a date
"And then i find out that one day you just decided to show back up dressed like a rich person with this girl I've never seen in the village but just as quickly as you show up you just disappeared, like the earth just up and swallowed you"
Then she shows you another picture, this tine of your meeting with Reimu, Marisa and Tenshi
"And lastly my informant finds out that you and the chaotic duo and that celestial girl are planning to raid the Eintei hospital"
She reaches into her coat again, this time pulling a pair of cuffs and binding one end to your hand before you can even react
"I sure hope you have an explanation for all of this anon, because from what I've gathered it reaaaaally looks like you are in some sort of drug trafficking ring"
Despite giving you a warm smile while saying this you can sense the seriousness on her voice

>>45240279
That would turn Reimu into a hentai teacher

Thankfully Yamame is handling herself just fine so far, i didn't knew Sekibanki could channel peanuts parent energy to hide her upper body.

>>45240594
Unfortunately for Kotohime, I had come prepared for this interrogation, supplemented by hours spent reading Miss Akyuu's detective novels. "I WANT MY LAWYER!" I yelled at the red woman's face. "AND I'M ALLOWED A VISITSTION!" I didn't really know what a lawyer was, but apparently it was important. Reimu could sort this all out. Clearly, my extensive experience of both being kidnapped and being held somewhere against my will would be paying off greatly here.
"Listen up, buddy! I got pictures - A, B, and C, showing one unlucky bastard - That's you, by the way - accompanying youkai, housing youkai in the village, and conspiring with the Hakurei Shrine Maiden to attack foreign immigrants!" The first two pictures, I could get, but the third showed me, Reimu, Tenshi and Marisa in the cafe in the village, discussing Eientei. "So youse better start talking or I'll make you talk, capiche!"
I was now really regretting not taking Lady Hecatia up on her offer of employment when I had the chance and escaping to Hell.

>>45240312
Things would get really confusing in reimu threads if we had a bunch of HSE anons talking about how she abused her husband and a bunch of KMS anons talking about how she doesn't abuse her husband

Imagine if Kogasa appears, froze, pointed at anon while screaming and then ran away
They would think anon tried to rape her or something like this

>>45240769
It is just how it is, it is like the yin and yang so to speak

>>45240772
we are the yang (the good ones)

>>45240796
>we are the yang (the good ones)
h-haha yeah... we totally are...

>>45240901
We're just the other flavor of bad ones
No sane man writes as much as this writeanon xoes

At least we're not hated by the rest of /jp/ like them

>>45240694
Yes.
Jokes aside, I think the prompt is open to interpretation as to how old the apprentice is (and Reimu for that matter), though it works best if there isn't too wide a gap in their comparative maturity as they're meant to learn from each other. As such, it could even work with him being older, although I conceptualized the idea with him being younger and think that fits better.

>>45240755
>Miss Akyuu's detective novels
You saying Chris Q is actually Hieda? Get a load of this guy.

>>45240943
i've only ever seen one guy samefagging about it and another guy egging him on if I'm honest. The stories are pretty good so I don't get where the hate is coming from.

>>45241089
He's mad the author of the Hanafic enjoys writing for the HSE instead of writing what he wants to read. But, please, let's stop here, whatever he says, ignore, hide and report it if you want, just don't feed him: this is a KMS thread.
I bring as a peace offering a cute image from our thread

Anon never met Cirno didn't he?

>>45242896
Akyuu finally took her frustrations out on Cirno and the three fairies of light, they are permanently dead anon, it's time to accept the facts.

>>45240943
>>45241089
As someone who gave those a skim and found them too OOC to enjoy (thanks, canon 'tism), I do find it slightly miffing the way they spill over to other threads, especially Reimu's. At least this story's fairly contained to its own corner of /jp/.

>>45240312
>>45240079
>On top of that he'd probably also help with her money making schemes and actually make them succeed.
I've been shipping the 'Mu with this guy forever, precisely for that reason.

>>45242922
Anon and Yams just encountered the fairies of light

>>45242988
You don't think Akyuu killed them the second they went off screen?
The Heida girl doesn't tolerate the existence of fairies, and neither should anybody else.

>>45242896
He hasn't met Chen either, despite meeting both Yukari and Ran.

Hey guys, Anon hasn't met Nemuno yet, what's up with that?

>>45245684
who?

>>45245684
>Nemuno

>>45245781
this one's not true anymore
19 confirmed the existence of a yamanba society and that nemuno might've adopted biten and raised her

I was starting to get the feeling that Hong Meiling had some level of personal dissatisfaction with her job. "-Day in, day out, I just stand there! I'm lucky I even get bathroom breaks! No one's thankful because those Spell Card Rules mean I can't actually fight people off properly, so they think of me as a joke, and even when I'm gardening, they tell me off for not guarding the gate, even though it's part of my job too!" Meiling drained her fourth cup of sake. I'd be worried if she wasn't a youkai. Well, and if it wasn't for the fact that I could see her house from where I was sitting. "I used to be feared! One of the strongest youkai around!" The poor gatekeeper looked about ready to burst into tears, so I patted her on the shoulder and told her that I could sympathize with being thrust into strange situations where nothing I knew mattered anymore. It wasn't quite the same, but I hoped that it was similar enough.

Meiling had dragged me into the conversation almost immediately after we'd sat down, and she'd yet to released me, but I could feel her passion for what she was talking about, so I was willing to sit and listen. Next to me, Kagerou had drawn Yamame into a conversation about sewing, or clothes, or something of that nature. I couldn't quite tell because every time I tried to hear a bit of their conversation, Meiling would bring me back to listening to her by starting on some new tirade. "-And Lady Patchouli just rearranged the entire flowerbed, then left me to deal with it! That nosy crow tengu journalist was here asking me questions about it for ages! Lady Patchouli only bothered revealing the truth later, after I'd already had my skills in gardening called into question." Well, that did sound very much like Aya Shameimaru, I couldn’t deny. I remarked that that same journalist was currently chasing after me for an interview, though I hadn't seen her in almost two weeks. Perhaps she'd forgotten about it. "She's so mean! She accused me of sneaking off for a nap so someone could put a crop circle in the flowerbeds, and then Lady Patchouli showed up and revealed that she had done it as an experiment without telling me! I was out there losing sleep every night because I didn't know how to change it back!" Meiling's eyes - a bright, piercing blue - seemed to be welling up with tears. I slowly asked her if she wanted a hug, and then found myself almost thrown backwards when she launched forward and wrapped her arms around me and started bawling.

"She gets like this, sorry." I heard a voice say, and I looked over to the side while awkwardly patting her back. "She's something of an emotional drunk." There was Wakasagihime, floating in the water and leaning against the white rock that she was using as a table. "I probably should have warned you, Mr. Human. Usually we try and keep her away from too much sake, but when you and Miss Yamame arrived, she drank a bit too much." Wakasagihime smiled sympathetically. "It's usually Kagerou that she's hugging and crying at." I looked over at the wolf in question, who was excitedly showing her hood to Yamame and asking her if she could repair it. It did look a little ragged, I supposed, and Yamame seemed to be far more in her element now that the conversation was about clothing, sewing, and repairing.

I looked back down at Meiling, who'd quietened down, so I gently pushed her off of me and told her that she was a great gardener, as I had seen the flowers in the mansion's courtyards at the height of summer when I'd been to see Lady Patchouli myself. "You think so...?" She asked quietly, and I smiled and nodded, which then set her off again. “My sister used to say that…” She mumbled. After a few more minutes, I realised that she'd stopped making noise, so I looked down and found that she'd fallen asleep with her head pressed against my arm.

"And there she goes." I heard Kagerou say, and I turned my head awkwardly to see that she and Yamame were watching me with some amusement. "It's like a really bright candle. Burns twice as fast." She got up, came over, and helped me lay the poor, drunken gatekeeper down. "She's been coming along to the meetings for a little bit - I think she heard Hime and I drunkenly singing once and decided to check out what was going on, only to end up joining in." Kagerou frowned. "...At least, I think that's what happened. I don't really remember. All I do remember is the nightmarish hangover the next day." That was an unfortunately familiar story, even if it hadn't particularly happened to me. Reimu and Yamame had both experienced a bit of a battering by the oni alcohol that Lady Kasen kept in her senkai, and I'd been surprised that they remembered as much as they had anyway.

I looked up at Kagerou and asked her if she knew what Meiling was talking about. Her sister? “Ah, yeah…She’s mentioned it before, usually only when she gets good and drunk. Seems that she had a sister, once. They grew apart, apparently. I think it’s a sore subject. Her name was…” Kagerou trailed off and frowned. “I know this. Hold on, it was something…A fruit. Orange? Maybe…?” I muttered some sort of acknowledgement, curious but unable to get any more answers. I thought of Kisami, Yamame’s elder sister with wild, red hair. She looked a little like Meiling, but she was a tsuchigumo, and Yamame had clearly known her since she was young besides, so I couldn’t imagine that they were related beyond it being a funny coincidence.

Kagerou sat down and reached over, pouring me some more sake from the bottle she'd brought over. Behind her, I saw Yamame looking slightly lost, and I was just about to call her over when Wakasagihime, the princess that she was, engaged her in a conversation about the places she had been, since she was more or less confined to the Misty Lake and the surrounding rivers that fed it. "So, you convinced her to come?" She asked me quietly. I looked over at Yamame, who was laughing at something that Wakasagihime had said, then I nodded to Kagerou. "And I convinced Banki - Banki!" She called, and the girl who was still leaning against the rock as if she was a statue herself started. "How long are you going to stand there by yourself? Come over here!"

"...I'm fine." Banki said, her voice sounding a little gravelly, like she didn't speak all that often. It also sounded slightly muffled, and I still couldn't actually see any evidence of a head on top of her shoulders, so I wondered if her actual head was somewhere else. Behind a rock, maybe? "I can hear just fine."
"Well, yeah, but-" Kagerou tried to entice her and failed immediately.

"It's fine." Banki stressed. "I'm happy enough here. Glad I came. Cheers." She raised the sake cup that she'd acquired from somewhere or other, and without really thinking, I did the same, then took a drink. Then, I realised that if her head wasn't there, how was she supposed to drink it? We stared at each other for a moment, then she finally just upended the cup where her head should have been. I had no clue if that would work, and it seemed to stretch incredulity just a little, but I'd stopped thinking about that sort of thing a long time ago. "Tastes good." She said, dryly, and I got the impression that she was smirking a little. "How did you get dragged into this?" Banki asked me, and I paused. I'd been interested in what a youkai gathering would be like, I finally said. Also, I wanted to try and introduce Yamame to some friendly youkai, which was looking like it had been a success. Finally - and I'd almost forgotten yet again - I wanted to return the stone that Wakasagihime had left behind to her.

Not wanting to miss the chance, I turned to Wakasagihime again. She and Yamame were talking about the largest body of water that Yamame had ever seen, in some place called Ostorail. I snorted, then with a sort of wave to Banki, stepped over to Yamame and put my hands on her shoulders, squeezing. She immediately sagged, and I let go before she could collapse entirely, then told Wakasagihime that it was Australia, not Ostorail. A massive, expansive ocean the likes of which I'd never even imagined could exist outside of the realm of books. So huge that you couldn't see an end to it, just endless blue where you struggled to tell what was ocean and what was the horizon. By the time I'd finished speaking, Yamame had recovered enough to punch me in the side, and I took it with as much grace as one can muster when punched in an area that causes your entire body to involuntarily move out of the way.

"Wow..." Wakasagihime mumbled. "That sounds incredible." It definitely had been, I could say that much for sure. "I'm, er, a freshwater mermaid, so I don't think I could go in big, salty oceans very well...But just hearing about them is nice enough!" She finished quickly, seemingly in an attempt to reassure us. I smiled and nodded, happy to have told her something interesting. "I bet there's some amazing gemstones out there..." She murmured to herself, and I nod, thinking that there surely were an uncountable number out there under the waves.

We stood there in silence for a moment, and Yamame cleared her throat. I looked at her, frowning, and she pointedly stared at me. I blankly looked back, and she threw her head in the direction of Wakasagihime. I looked at the princess, then back at Yamame. Finally, she elbowed me in the side, then muttered "Stone." at me, and the dots in my head finally connect, making me gasp in relief at remembering. I reached into my pockets and pulled the small bag that Yamame had found for me in her workshop out. It was an incredibly fine woven silk, to the point that I'd almost not wanted to use it, but she'd assured me that she had plenty of silk, so it wasn't a huge loss. So, I'd taken the bag, dropped Wakasagihime' s stone into it, and then promptly forgotten it as soon as we'd left. So, we'd gone back to get it, and now I was standing here with it in my hand.

Finally, the stone had been returned. Here, I said to the princess. This is yours. "Oh, mine?" Wakasagihime's face rounded in curious interest, and she delicately took the proffered bag from my hand and gracefully undid the strings tying it together. "Whatever is...Oh!" Her face lit up in recognition when she finally got the bag open. Inside sat the green stone that she'd shown me when we had first met. I'd taken one of the days that Yamame and I had been fairly idle - Well, I say idle, but Yamame had been sewing for the whole day and I'd had little else to do - and used it to polish the stone. Nothing special, just water, a little bit of elbow grease and a cloth that Yamame had spared me, but I'd gotten rid of any marks on it and left it looking about as clean as I could get it. "This - This is that stone! The one I showed you!" Wakasagihime told me, her eyes lighting up as she gently lifted it from the bag. She looked up at me. "You kept it, all this time?" Shrugging and feeling a little self-conscious at the attention, I said that it was hers, so it wouldn't have been right to lose it.

Wakasagihime raised it to catch what little moonlight there was, and I heard Yamame let out a little noise when the tiny stone began to cast beautiful patterns across the rock below it. "You cleaned it, didn't you?" Wakasagihime asked me, and I nodded, squatting down so I could get a little closer, Yamame following me down. "Oh, it's beautiful." She murmured. "It was the first stone I ever found." She looked at it, but I got the impression that she was looking through it at something that none of us could see. "May I, er, hug you?" She slowly asked me. I, caught off-guard by the question, stammered something incomprehensible until Yamame sighed and knocked me in the back just hard enough to push me forward so that Wakasagihime could wrap her arms around me. "Thank you, for looking after it." She told me, squeezing just a little tighter before releasing me. I stumbled backwards, since I'd been awkwardly leaning over the large rock that served as her table, and realised that my sides were damn where her kimono had caught me. "Oh, I've found more pretty stones since you were last here!" She told me excitedly, turning and diving into the water, leaving nothing but spreading ripples from where she'd just been.

"You've got her excited." Yamame commented, elbowing me again, but a lot more lightly this time. She sounded a lot more relaxed than she had going into the meeting, which I took to be a good thing. "Did you put some of your divine luck into that thing?" I shrugged, not really sure what I'd done to excite Wakasagihime so much. "You're always like this, you know." Yamame said, concealing a smile. Like what, I asked. "You just...help people. Sometimes you don't even seem to realise it." I stared at her blankly. "Oh, come on." She insisted. "You come into contact with Reimu and suddenly she's calling you her brother? You've told me that that ex-celestial and Marisa Kirisame have taken up a close friendship, right? That's after you met with them both." I blinked, then said that it had just been a coincidence. "Really? What about me? I meet you, then suddenly I'm changing my diet and seeing my sisters more, and I'm out here, now, at a meeting for youkai, even though I've always been more solitary. Are you sure that you didn't have something to do with this?" I opened my mouth, then trailed off. Yamame giggled, then pulled me down to give me a kiss on the cheek. "It's a good thing, you silly man." She told me, letting me stand up, but retaining my hands. "Especially you and Miss Kasen." I raised an eyebrow. "She mentioned how you'd given her advice when she took me for that talk in the hot springs." Had she? Yamame had told me about their meeting, but I hadn't really thought about that part. "Maybe that's why I love you. You're just...kind."

I looked over and saw that Kagerou was watching us, and she had a small smile on her face. Instantly, I felt a little self-conscious, and I looked away, back at Yamame, who smiled up at me. Then, with a splash, Wakasagihime launched up from the water, sending water droplets everywhere, and she performed a somersault in the air before diving back down, then finally she returned to the surface slowly and came to a rest at her stone, water streaming from her hair, her chin, her clothes, and...Well, pooling in her cleavage when she brought her arms together on the stone, her kimono loosening. I would have felt worse about noticing, if I couldn't see that Yamame had noticed the exact same thing. "Here, look, look!" Wakasagihime told us excitedly, opening her hands to scatter a number of coloured stones across her table, joining the green one that was already there. "The lake goes really deep, you see, so the further I dive down, the more stones I find." She picked up one of the stones, a blueish-green one which caught the moonlight and almost twinkled. "This is an opal, I think." She offered it to me, and I delicately took it, scared of somehow breaking it. It was wet, and I wiped it with my sleeve, revealing the shifting patterns inside, and I found it somewhat mesmerizing.

"Wow..." Yamame mumbled, staring over my shoulder. "That's really pretty, princess." She told Wakasagihime, who giggled and agreed.

"This one," She said, selecting a green stone, though it was a different shade of green from the one that I had kept with me, "Is a peridot." She lifted it to catch the light, which showed the curious patterns in contained. "I think these come from the outside world. They drift in and wind up under the lake. I think that a lot of things do that, and there's probably an untold amount of treasures down there." She cast a glance downwards, just for a moment. "Makes me wish I had someone else to explore it all with..." After a second, she shook her head and looked up. "Sorry! Er, ignore me. I'm probably a little tipsy. This one, here, it's an, um, amethyst." The stone she lifted was a vibrant purple, and I found it very interesting to look at. It felt mysterious, aloof and yet, unmistakeable in its nature. I found it alluring, but at the same time, I didn't want to try and touch it.

There were plenty more, and Wakasagihime took us through most of them. "Oh, and Kagerou's offered to try and take me to some of the other lakes in Gensokyo!" She told us, looking very excited. "I get to see what other kinds of pretty stones are out there!" I thought about it. There were plenty of lakes up in the mountains, small ones, to the largest one near the top of the mountain where the Moriya Shrine was. Not to mention, there were other lakes that I'd heard about seen from a distance across the valleys surrounding the village. I couldn't say for sure what any of them were like, but I was certain that they were interesting, and I offered my well wishes to Wakasagihime for her trip, a sentiment that Yamame echoed.

"I wonder if there's even more stones underground." Yamame wondered out loud, and Wakasagihime's head froze, then very slowly shifted toward her. Yamame almost quailed under the stare, but she recovered quickly enough. "Um, I was just thinking about the river running across the bridge leading to the Old City, but actually, I think it's probably too rapid for any pretty stones to be hiding under there..."

Wakasagihime relaxed, which allowed Yamame to relax too. I tried to reassuringly rub the small of her back. "I suppose not...That's really a shame, too, because I'd love to try and see the underground one day." By this point, the moon had climbed high in the sky and the temperature had dropped considerably. I hadn't really noticed since I'd been busy with Meiling talking my ear off, but now, I was starting to feel it a little. Yamame didn't look colder at all, but did seem a little slower to respond, which made me more than a little worried that she was starting to...freeze, or however spiders did it. Deciding to head the problem off early, I pulled Yamame to sit in my lap so I could wrap my arms around her and try to keep us both warm. "My, you two are rather cute, aren't you?" Wakasagihime commented with a smile. "But perhaps it's time for you both to be off? I mean no offense, but you both look a little...tired." I looked around, and saw that Kagerou was laying back on the picnic blanket next to Meiling, and she looked a little sleepy, too. Banki had moved behind the rock that she was leaning on so she could lean against it properly, so I assumed that she was tired too. I looked over at Wakasagihime and asked her if she was tired, too. "Oh, maybe a little..." She trailed off for a moment. "But I find that when you live in a lake like this, you cherish every moment you get to spend with people who can walk the land." That made me feel a little sorry for her, stuck in the lake. "Oh, don't pity me, please! I am happy. And I enjoy seeing others happy, too."

Wakasagihime ask us to come a little closer. Yamame was quiet now, but she did manage to shift herself enough for me to shuffle forward. "I've been told that I have a good eye for this sort of thing," She said, collecting the stones that she'd scattered on the rock. "So, I'd like you to have this." she held out an enclosed palm and beckoned me to put my hand under it. The princess opened her hand and let a stone drop into my palm, which she immediately covered with her own hand so that I couldn't see what it was. "Please, take good care of it." Then, she pulled her hand away, revealing the same stone that I'd just given her back. Frowning, I looked at her. She wanted me to keep this one. "Yes, that's right. Keep it." She replied, sweetly. But...I looked at the stone, then back at her. I had thought that this stone meant a lot to her. She had said that it was the first she had collected. "Yes, well...That's the only kind of gift worth giving, isn't it?" She gave Yamame and I a look that suggested that she knew something that we hadn't figured out yet. "In return, remember to invite me, when it happens." I asked her what I would be inviting her to, but she didn't answer. So, instead I slowly asked her what she had an eye for.

And she smiled, slightly mysteriously. "Well, Mr. Human, Miss Yamame, that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

>>45245883
What a cheeky fish

>>45245883
Waka is already aiming for their future shota, devious youkai aunties are everywhere!
Remember to never trust these predators, especially the princesses, Momoyo is espically dangerous.

"Hello there you must be the groom"
"Oh no need to worry, you don't know me, my name is Byakuren Hijiri and i'm a big supporter of youkai and human relationships, i just dropped by to give my congratulations to you and the bride"
"Where is she anywa-wha-YOU?!"

>>45245857
wtf reimu killed meiling sister
>>45245883
fish the cutest
>>45246035
you remembered me that byakuren need to appear in this story

>>45246196
Her being shocked at Yamame marrying a human during their wedding is all the screen time she needs

>>45245874
>"Makes me wish I had someone else to explore it all with..."
Considering this thing is century old already, you could probably find a working one in Rinnosuke's store. Plus with some magical modifications by him to allow talking and longer oxygen time and her dream comes true.

>>45246204
She will see how Yamame has changed in relation to humans, so she will kidnap Anon to the temple to make the youkai there fall in love with him, causing the same effect

>>45246262
This is not the Byakuren slander thread Miko

>>45245860
>“I know this. Hold on, it was something…A fruit. Orange? Maybe…?
What if it was lemon...?

>>45246273
Obviously she meant Suika

>>45245860
>Hold on, it was something…A fruit. Orange?
HAHAHA I was gonna joke about how everyone was forgetting her when talking about redhead fever, and Writefriend actually addressed her before I could even open my mouth.
I never liked the DDC bosses much since there isn't really much to them in canon. I dedicate my daily gushing over the character portrayals in this story to them. Waggy and Awoo are sweethearts, and Banki cracks me up. They may not be very developed or emotionally moving like the main cast, but they still feel alive.

>>45246196
Don't worry, Marisa freed all the youkai Reimu sealed in the ending. Y'know, as a prank.
So that means Orange is doing just fine and dandy.

>>45245883
>that's the only kind of gift worth giving
There's another one, he's done it again

>>45246296
I didn't forget about her, i tried my fucking hardest to write a lil bit with her and couldn't come up with anything.

>>45246800
No worries, it's not like you have anything at all to even go of off lmao

>>45246800
I would be easier to write ZUN himself appearing in the story than some literally whos from pc98.

>>45246950
I think of ZUN as the reimu of the outside world hakurei shrine

>>45247077
He's a corrupt enforcer of the law who murders as he wills and does not have any regard for needless killing?

>>45247086
I mean like the head of the shrine
I don't know the word for male shrine maiden my is english bad

>>45247077
Maybe he is a sage. An oni perhaps which would explain his love for beer. He shares a highly exagerated version of the incidents as a joke amongst the sages.
Him being an oni would alsp explain why we never him without a hat before.

>>45247128
Priest? There is no male word for maiden since maiden means virgin woman.

>>45247156
what really? i though it was the title of who as the boss of a shrine

>>45245684
Aya has threatened to toss him to the hags before hasn't she?

>>45247174
Yup, maiden only means virgin so when we say shrine maiden it only means a virgin women who works at a shrine. Miko is the nip term but I think you knew that already. Fun fact: supposedly non-virgin and virgin shrine maidens usually wear slightly differentiating color schemes.

>>45248109
Thats why Sanae wears green. Now which color is which is up to debate.

>>45247625
she threatened to give him to the wolves, then threatened to give him to megumu, who's kind of a hag

>>45249354
Aya would get strung up like a towel if she called Megumu a hag

You know we keep talking about wrapping the story up but we never did the interview thing.

Anyone else jealous of Anon for getting to hang out with all sorts of pretty otherworldly girls?

>>45250066
I don't think it's worth the emotional and physical trauma

>>45250066
Remember that all but a couple of these encounters went completely horribly until after he got a girlfriend

>>45250352
>>45250599
Eh, I get what you're saying, but I'd equate Anon's trauma to having your relatives die to war/natural disaster/pandemic/famine/etc in real life, AKA things that many people have managed to come round from on their own.
Human perseverance and adaptability are no joke, and having these sorts of interactions is the best therapy anyone could ask for.

>>45248170
>Thats why Sanae wears green
no way... sanae is not virgin...

>>45248109
Is Bluemu the Reimu who actually got the D?
I don't know much about Lost Word lore, but I recall her being even more of a cunt than the original Reimu.

>>45253387
Well her Suika died

>>45250066
Are you jealous because he is not with you, parsee?

>>45248170
>>45253387
Memes aside the colors on their uniform would be inverted if they were married or otherwise not a maiden. Instead of a white blouse or whatever its called and red dress like 98 mu's uniform the colors would be inverted.
Naturally there's no hard rule to this shintoism being what it is, but its a nice fun fact to consider. Also the colors didn't have to be red, sometimes oranges and others would be used. It just depended on what was avaliable or local tradition

With no forthcoming answers from Wakasagihime, who kept looking at Yamame and I and mischievously smiling, and a drunken, passed out gatekeeper in Meiling, and Kagerou staring up at the sky and casually chatting to Banki, who's head I'd finally spotted floating around her, though it was still too far from the only real source of light in the lamp that had sat on the picnic blanket - which had burnt out at some point, I decided that it was probably about time to get going. Yamame felt quite cold, and I was a little worried by how quiet she'd gotten, but I was also very thankful that she'd taken a moment to explain to me what exactly might happen if she got too cold. I tried my best to warm her up, but I came to the conclusion that the best choice I could make would be to simply go home, so I took off my coat and wrapped it around her, which she only offered some weak protests to, and even those fizzled out almost immediately.

"Are you going?" Kagerou asked me, sitting up from where she had been lying on her back on staring up at the stars. She caught the sight of Yamame, all bundled up in my coat. "Ah...Is she too cold? Sorry, I didn't think...I guess we're all just used to it." The wolf got to her feet and stepped over Meiling, who muttered something in her sleep and rolled onto her side. "Yamame, can you hear me?"

"Yes..." Yamame mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm fine, I just need to warm up a little..." She curled up in my coat, drawing it in closer around her.

"Okay, well..." Kagerou looked around. "We're really happy that you came tonight. We try to do these meetings every week at least, so we'd love it if you came again." She looked over at me. "Yamame and I were talking about possibly making me a new cloak, since my one is..." I looked at it, and I could tell that it was definitely well-worn. "Well, anyway, we were arranging to meet up to discuss it a bit further. In that café that I was, er, working at." I nodded and made an endorsement of Yamame's skills, pointing out that she'd made all of the clothes I was currently wearing. "Even that coat?" Kagerou asked, sounding impressed. "Wow, she really is good." The coat really did seem like her crowning achievement, I agreed. "So...Yeah. I think we were going to try and meet up in two days or so? Yamame?"

"Uh-huh..." Yamame mumbled. "Two days. Um, midday. Café..." Here, I decided that it was probably time to go, so I scooped Yamame up and she curled up into my chest. I'd spent so much time carrying girls around at this point that I found it fairly easy to lift her up without losing my balance or even feeling much exertion. "Nice meeting you all..." She managed to say, but she was getting more and more still.

That began the round of goodbyes properly, so Kagerou started by clapping me on the shoulder. "I'm glad you both came. And I hope you come again." I hoped so too. I hoped that Yamame was planning to as well, since that had been my intention for the whole thing.

Banki finally broke her streak of leaning against the rock and keeping out of sight, coming over toward us. Or rather, her body did. She wore a red cloak with a deep blue interior, and a black, tightly fitting shirt that hugged her hips and hung down in two spikes. Her skirt was red, but looked lighter in colour and seemed to be made out of a different, slightly softer material, and I took notice of, but forced myself not to stare, at the dizzying amount of her thighs that I could see, because her skirt was really rather short.

Of course, this all paled in comparison to the fact that she had no head. Hearing about a flying head youkai was one thing, but seeing her headless body stride toward us as if her head actually was there was definitely an unnerving image, and I tried my hardest not to stare in a rude manner. "Banki, what are you-?" Kagerou began, but Banki cut her off.

"Shut it." Her voice growled, though it still sounded like it was coming from a distance somewhere. "Nice meeting you. I'll probably see you again." I blinked for a moment, and even though I couldn't see her head, I got the idea that she felt like she'd said something wrong. "I do go to the village, sometimes." Her voice was a little quicker that time.

"Yeah." Kagerou said. "Sometimes." I'd heard Kagerou talking to Banki outside the café, so I guessed that she'd probably been coming to the village for a while. "But she'll be in disguise, right? You might never know when you're talking to a scary youkai! She could be anyone...A random villager, the girl at the flower shop...She could even be the waitress at a café" Kagerou told me with raised eyebrows and a spooky some of voice.

"Th-That'd be ridiculous!" Banki actually sounded slightly panicked, even though her voice was muffled and further away. "Like a youkai could get a job at a sweets shop!" She was waving her hands around in a way that reminded me of Oseki when I had tried to ask her on a date, once upon a time. Her café was a sweets shop, too, but I supposed that she would know that since she'd been just outside of it.

Then, just when I was ready to leave, I heard coughing and saw Meiling throw herself upright, then roll over in a coughing fit. "Stop hogging the baton, sister!" She moaned, before falling onto her back again and mumbling that she would be just as good with it if she was allowed to practice. I really didn't know what to make of that, mostly because I didn't really know what the baton would even be for. I had seen Meiling before some sorts of slow dances before - something that was supposedly Tai Chi or some other sort of martial art that I didn't really know about, so perhaps the baton would have been part of a dance of some sort.

"Like I said," Kagerou nudged the gatekeeper with her foot. "Only when she's dead drunk. If you ask her tomorrow morning, she'll probably tell you that she doesn't even have a sister." That sounded...Sad. I'd seen far too much strife between people who should have been close to each other, like the two Ibaraki's, and I was already starting to feel like I should come by and talk to Meiling sometime, when Kagerou poked me. "You look like you're...thinking. Honestly, I think you've got enough to worry about without adding the problem of Meiling's family drama to it. Don't you think so, Hime?"

"Hmm?" Wakasagihime looked up from the stones she was still messing around with. "Oh, yes, I should think so." She smiled innocently at me, and I frowned. I still didn't really know what she was talking about when she gave me that stone. "That stone is an emerald, I think." I tried to ask her again why she had given it to me, but she cut me off. "Just something to think about." The princess gave me another one of her innocent smiles and I found myself struggling to respond with anything meaningful. I really had no clue what she was trying to imply, but she certainly seemed to have an agenda. When I'd stared at her for a few seconds and found that she wasn't breaking under the prolonged gaze like everyone else I had tried it on, I gave up and thanked her again for the stone. "You're very welcome!" She replied brightly.

Finally, the rounds of goodbyes were done, and I bid the Grassroots Youkai Network - Plus one gatekeeper - farewell one last time, then began the arduous trek around the edge of the Misty Lake in the direction of the Scarlet Devil Mountain. I had no idea what time it was, but the thin sliver of the moon that I could see looked to be nearing the top of the mountains surrounding the valley, so I assumed that it was probably somewhere around early to mid-morning. Of course, we were just about encroaching on the beginning of winter, so the nights were getting longer and the days were getting shorter, and I would probably have no idea what time of day it was at all before long.

The ground was slightly uneven, and it was causing my legs to ache slightly as I battled through it to reach the smoother grassland that led up from the edge of the Misty Lake to the Vampire's mansion. Yamame seemed to have warmed up slightly, or at least, she wasn't getting any colder, which had me breathe a sigh of relief, only for me to draw a sharp breath when I must have gotten just slightly too close to the gate of the mansion, because suddenly three of the fairies, sharp spears in hand, shot forward in a threatening motion, making me take a step back.

But as usual, my track record with the unexpected happening continued to hold true, because where there had been open air a second earlier, there were suddenly blood-red eyes and silver hair. "You." The silver-haired maid of the Vampire's mansion had a voice that was as cold as the blade of the knife she had already pressed against my throat. She cast her eyes down at Yamame, who had fallen asleep again somewhere on the way through the uneven terrain. "A youkai?" She said it as if it was a question, but I got the distinct feeling that it wasn't a question I was supposed to answer. "A tsuchigumo." She continued, using the correct name. "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?" Slowly, I cast my eyes down in the direction of the knife pressed against my throat. I hoped that it would fail to penetrate my skin with the peach, but I didn't much feel like taking the chance. After a moment that stretched on forever and had my heart pounding in my ears, she pulled the knife away, leaving me to breathe a sigh of relief.

Finally able to speak, I explained as quickly as I could that I'd been invited, along with the girl in my arms, to a meeting of youkai, and I was just now returning. "A meeting of youkai?" The maid repeated, slightly incredulously. "Do you have the slightest idea how ridiculous that sounds?" I nodded, then confirmed that I'd gone anyway. "They'll kill you." I shrugged and said that they'd been pretty nice, actually. "I feel the need to ask if you've been cursed, or otherwise suffered some breakdown of your cognitive ability." Not...to my knowledge, I eventually said. "Are you certain?" She asked again, slipping her knife into a strap around her thigh. Yes, I repeated. Pretty sure. She stared at me a moment longer, than sighed. "I should have figured you for a danger to yourself when you came here, by yourself, asking to see Lady Patchouli." That hadn't seemed that bad to me, but I supposed that I'd had a very sheltered world view at the time, so I couldn't say for sure.

"In case you didn't know, my name is Sakuya Izayoi. I'm the head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. I tend to the needs of my lady, the Scarlet Devil herself, Remilia Scarlet." It sounded fairly impressive, so I introduced Yamame and myself. That said, I didn't have particularly good feelings toward vampires, and I only really knew Lady Patchouli out of the ones who lived there, so I didn't have much positive to say in response to her. "I'm here because my useless excuse for a gatekeeper has disappeared, as if she's earnt such a privilege as a night off, and here I spot a possible intruder at the front gates. They," She nodded toward the fairies manning the door, who had by now sat down against said door, tossed their spears to the side and were chatting with each other, "Are useless if the intruder has the slightest experience in danmaku, so I decided to check for myself." The fairies, to no real surprise, ignored her. "But here I find a human and a youkai. And in defiance of all that is logical, the human is carrying the youkai home." I was starting to get the impression that Sakuya Izayoi just wanted to complain about something, but was struggling to bring her speech around to it. Finally given an opportunity to speak, I said that Yamame had fallen asleep, so I was carrying her back home. "How noble." Sakuya replied, her tone falling back into the coldness she had started with. "Until she decides that she's feeling a little hungry, one day." I was starting to feel a little cold toward Sakuya myself, so I shortly said that I'd deal with that problem when it came to it. Not to mention, I felt that she was being a little unfair about Meiling. She seemed to be trying her best, and she had problems of her own that she wasn't dealing with. I knew what that was like.

"Now, I have a question that you will answer. Have you seen my gatekeeper?" And now, I had a quandary. I didn't think that Meiling deserved the punishment she would probably receive if I told Sakuya where she really was, and I also wasn't sure I could convincingly lie to her. I also didn't think that Sakuya deserved the truth if she was going to treat Meiling in the manner that she clearly was. This all went through my mind in the blink of an eye, and finally, I said that I had seen her, but she was busy with some family issues. "Meiling doesn't have any family." Sakuya coolly replied. "Try again." Clearly, Meiling didn't consider the head maid a friend, or anything close enough to tell her about her own family. "Could she perhaps be off in the human village, slacking off?" No, I replied sharply. "Why do you sound so sure? Are you protecting her?"

I thought that she just wanted a break. From the monotony, and the lack of praise, and the general disdain. And she'd found that break somewhere where she wasn't being judged for having a skillset that wasn't suited to danmaku duels. Out loud, I said that she was busy, and would likely be back in the morning. "Ah, I see..." Sakuya murmured, and I could tell immediately that she didn't believe me. "Well, I shall have to speak with her about this when she returns." Just as I was sure she could tell that I didn't believe her. She was probably going to punish Meiling.

"Run along, before a youkai besides the one in your arms decides to take a bite out of you. Or before I decide that my mistress requires an extra meal." I kept my face stoic and unbothered because I refused to let her intimidate me. I'd probably be back to visit Lady Patchouli, I said. "Of course." Said Sakuya. "As long as she welcomes you." And with that, she disappeared as if she'd never been there at all.

I shivered, then turned and continued to head along the path out of the Misty Lake's vicinity. I didn't think I liked Sakuya Izayoi. She was cold, she didn't hesitate to insult the fairies under her employment, and she was probably planning to punish Meiling in the morning. Plus, she'd sort of insulted Yamame by implying that she'd try and eat me one day. Perhaps I was just a bit too sensitive for my own good and Meiling's outbursts had gotten to me in a fashion I hadn't expected. I had a weak spot for anything related to family. Or, perhaps, Sakuya was just a cold, indifferent boss. I'd heard Reimu mention Remilia Scarlet's sister, once, in conjunction with blowing up the moon. I still wasn't entirely convinced that she actually could, but I wondered if the relationship between Remilia and her sister was good. I hoped so.

By the time I reached the crossroads leading to the village and the Shrine, Yamame had warmed up enough that she was sleeping more peacefully. I supposed that she'd been tired, too, having spent most of the previous day stressing about the meeting. Still, I had to bring her all the way through the caves if I wanted to get her home, and honestly, I was freezing cold now, and while I wasn't drunk - due to the peach, in one of the more tragic effects it had bestowed - I was still fairly tired. I wasn't entirely sure I could make it all the way through the caves. For a moment, I thought about it, and then I turned in the opposite direction and began on the path toward the Shrine. I could only hope that Reimu was still awake, or was at least willing to not throw a needle between my eyes before I could explain why I was showing up to the Shrine, freezing cold and with a sleeping girl in the early hours of the morning.

By the time I'd climbed the steps up to the Shrine, I felt like I'd prefer the needle between my eyes more than anything else. The tiredness was getting to me and making it hard to even lift my feet, and the last few steps were murder. Once I was finally at the top, breathing fairly harshly, I sighed in dejection at the fact that the lights were all off. I supposed that I should have seen that coming, but still, I crossed the courtyard - which was covered in leaves, as the last vestiges of Autumn claimed what remained of the trees, and awkwardly got up onto the veranda. Hoping that I could at least get into the Shrine's spare room, I began to walk across the veranda, but as soon as I passed Reimu's room, the door was flung open and a gohei smacked into my head, sending me flying off the veranda and painfully crashing into the hard ground below. That, horrifyingly, meant that I'd dropped Yamame, but I heard an exclaim and when I managed to shake the stars from my eyes, I saw that Reimu's reflexes had apparently kicked in, because she'd been able to dash forward and catch Yamame before she could hit the ground.

The end result was me on the ground with a sore head, Yamame with wild eyes and her arms wrapped around Reimu's neck, and Reimu staring at me disbelievingly. "What the hell are you doing?" She demanded, sharply. "Why are you sneaking around outside my Shrine at this time of night?"

"U-Um, what's going on...?" Yamame slowly asked, her voice tentative and slightly nervous. "Reimu?" She looked at Reimu and suddenly seemed to realise what she was doing, and she scrambled free of her grip, only to trip on my coat since it was far too long for her, which sent her tumbling to the veranda. She groaned in pain, then turned and looked at me. "What are you doing down there?" She asked me, incredulously. "Why are we at the Shrine? I thought we were at the Misty Lake?"

"What are you both doing here!?" Reimu's voice raised slightly, and I dragged myself to my feet as fast as I could, explaining that I'd been to that youkai meeting I'd mentioned to her, and then hadn't been able to make the trip back while carrying Yamame. "Oh, you're such an idiot!" She cried at me, stomping forward. First, she picked up her gohei and threw it back inside her room, and then dragged me up onto the veranda. "Why didn't you just say something!? I thought there was a vengeful spirit sneaking around or something! Are you trying to scare me half to death?" I mumbled an apology. "Not good enough! You're going on Shrine Fixing duty with Tenshi tomorrow!" I looked up at her blankly. "Don't say anything, just - Just go and get the spare futon...Actually, no. Just...Come with me." She dragged me inside her room, only stopping to let me kick my boots off. "You too, Yamame!" She called, and I saw Yamame follow, still looking a little bit lost and confused. "Arms." Reimu muttered at me, and I automatically raised them without even thinking. "Your sweater's probably a little dirty, and...It smells like alcohol."

That, I realised, was probably Meiling, spilling her cup on my clothes while sobbing and shouting about her work stress. With my arms raised, Reimu dragged my shirt off of me. "Yamame?" She asked, turning to the spider. "I've got a spare kimono in the cupboards, just down there." She pointed down the corridor that led from her room, and despite still looking a little confused, Yamame nodded and headed off. "Was it okay? Was Yamame okay?" Reimu asked me quietly. After a moment's thought, I nodded. "Good. I'll get the rest out of you later. You're still getting punished for showing up like this, though." Somehow, I found that a far fairer punishment than the one that Sakuya was probably going to inflict on Meiling.

"Is this the one?" I heard Yamame ask, and I was pleased to see her enter the room in Reimu's spare kimono, which did a very good job of fitting her. "It's a little..." That, however, seemed like a mistake.

"A little what?" Reimu asked sharply.

"Er, a little...tight." Yamame backpedalled, but I could see her fiddling with the sleeves, and I had a feeling that she was thinking about them being rather threadbare compared to anything she could have made. "But it's more than enough. Thank you, Reimu."

"Right." Reimu muttered. She rubbed her head. "I'm too tired for this. You, and you," She pointed at each of us in turn, "Get the spare futon and go to bed." I, already knowing where it was, automatically went, dragged it out, and positioned it next to Reimu. Reimu, for her part, immediately went and got back in her own futon, and was asleep in the time it took me to get the spare one out. Finally, I invited Yamame to join me.

We were both settled in a few minutes, though it was still a little chilly. To rectify this, I pulled Yamame as close to me as possible. And after a few minutes, I realised that Reimu had shifted a little, toward us, and she still had that habit of curling up and drawing all of the blanket around her. She looked cold.

I must have drifted off, because when my eyes snapped open, I found that Reimu's futon had overlapped with the spare one, and she was now curled up on my other side and using my arm as a pillow, while Yamame had her arms wrapped around me and clung tightly.

Just like old times.

Only now i realized that the seasons in the story follow the real life ones

>>45256526
>I found that Reimu's futon had overlapped with the spare one, and she was now curled up on my other side and using my arm as a pillow, while Yamame had her arms wrapped around me and clung tightly.
A lucky man.
And soon we will have tenshi interacting with yamame!

Ah yes, Meiling is definitely in for some punishment when she gets back in the morning.

What do you think will happen first: Anon finds out Seki is Banki, or Marisa finds out his girlfriend is Yamame?
Also, I gotta wonder, where's Aunn in all of this? I assume she would at least help out Reimu with Shrine Fixing duty.

>>45256836
will anon fix sakuya?

>>45256859
No but if could get interesting if anon tries to see how resistant the peach makes him to vampire teeth, having tested it on a tsuchigumo and an oni

>>45256526
>I thought there was a vengeful spirit sneaking around or something
Not anymore...

Wirtefag i hope you are not setting up a harem ending...

Anon isnt very lucky with silver hairded women.

>>45256859
Only if she dyes her hair red

>>45256851
The real question is when he is going to kick out the freeloader in his house?

>>45256859
If that happens it would be funny to see these two interacting and being dumb together

>>45256862
Apparently touhou vampires are related to oni in some way so Remilia could probably power through the peach

>>45256893
please let's not start again...

>>45256898
Just like how he had a fluke with one redhead(Orin) there will be one albino that will love him

>>45256916
I think they ended up becoming related because of a translation error where they would translate vampire as blood sucking oni. Makes you wonder if in a alternate western Gensokyo onis would ended up becoming ogres like how they are usually translated.

>>45256929
Usually it's either ogres or full blown orcs

>>45256836
That's okay, because she has frens.

>>45256916
They're not related to oni as vampires aren't native to Gensokyo but their physical strength is equal if not even slightly stronger than an oni for the strongest vampires like Remila. I suspect if anon tries or unwillingly ends up testing it there's likely an abrupt bad ending to the story.

>>45256993
It’s cool, she just needs to know hurting him would make Reimu (and half of Gensokyo at this point) angry.

>>45257070
Imagine the chaos when anon start to get old and they realise he only has a few years left to live.

>>45256898
I wonder who it would be

>>45257251
for >>45256926

>>45257222
Imagine Anon going to Reimu's funeral after she dies young like the previous Hakurei maidens

Anon just needs to use his divine luck and seduce Sakuya as a way to make her kinder to Meiling.

>>45257266
She never scored.

>>45257251
>>45257264
Eirin, after they start to know ewch other better in the therapy seessions. Then the therapist will bececome therapist.

>>45257070
That's a good point. Remilia seems to be extremely fond of Reimu in canon, so I doubt that she would do anything to piss her off. I always saw her as a reformed youkai anyway.

>>45257264
>>45257251
you have to ask?

Yorihime after being influenced by Anon's charisma be like:
"Anon, your undeniable purity has warmed our hearts, earning our respect as an honorary Lunarian."
"We owe a heartfelt apology to Yukari, as well as all inhabitants of Gensokyo that we have wronged in the past."
"To express the depth of our sincerity, we will be allowing our moon rabbits to unionize, and they will be granted a minimum of 30 days of annual leave from now on."
"Naturally, you shall always find welcoming doors in the Moon Capital. Please do honor us with your presence at the Dragon Palace. My dear sister and I would love to personally give you a taste of mochi sandwich, our culinary specialty."
"Hm? Me, a married woman? Ahaha... no, no. That bit must have been lost in translation. I was merely implying that I eagerly anticipate getting marr- *cough* merry with you."
"Erm... sure. You can bring your spider along too."

>>45258728
She's still a whimsical asshole, I'm sure she'd find a way to mess with anon without hurting him.

>>45259692
That's very easy. She just has to say "I got your parents killed lmao". Bam, now she holds the dubious honor of being one of three total people on this planet to have genuinely made him mad.

>>45259732
Seija obviously is one but who's the third?

>>45259761
I'm pretty sure it's Eirin

>>45259769
no I think he's always been a bit mixed of opinion on eirin because he couldn't figure out if it she was a psycho or not
it could be satori though

>>45259769
That's what I was thinking.

>>45259789
I'd say Eirin counts. Despite acknowledging that something tipped her off into the deep end, he was continually spiteful and afraid of her until she formally apologized to him. Even now, he still doesn't completely trust her, and may not ever fully forgive her for what she put him through.
I honestly forgot about Satori. Let's make that four people, forcibly drawing out his memories of his parents' death made him hate her.

>>45259732
>That's very easy. She just has to say "I got your parents killed lmao".
I wonder how that reveal would work out in practice, really. I think it'd have to be a genuine blunder from the young mistress not meant to anger Anon, regardless of the end result. After all, he is under Reimu's protection and on friendly terms with Patchouli.
Unlike Seija, Remilia wasn't physically present when Anon's parents were murdered. And while she was the mastermind behind the revolt, it's fair to assume that she is clueless about the specifics beyond "a bunch of regular humans were killed before Yukari and the others beat my ass, and I was forced to strike a deal with her before moving on".

>>45259761
sakuya
>>45256515
>I didn't think I liked Sakuya Izayoi
It's Anon way of saying he hates you

>>45260088
The mistress wanted to scare anon but not like that...

>>45260088
I can imagine him and yammy being dragged over to the SDM by Reimu after she got invited for tea or something where she accidentally drops the bomb on the poor doofus

>>45245857
Anon should introduce Meiling to Yuuka, she would appreciate a gardener.

>>45262142
Yeah speaking of, Yuuka really should run into anon soon and be slightly mad at him for not visiting his peach tree.

>>45263083
>""""""""slightly"""""""""

Imagine if anon has already met koishi several times but when it comes to reporting here he forgets.

>>45263128
He already did on Reimu's home

>>45263219
when?

>>45263253
You don't remember?

>>45263258
no...

>>45263258
>>45263260
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tETJK4EG1aY

>>45260302
He does dislike her, but I don't think he outright despises her as with the other aforementioned characters. It was more of a "I'm upset since you're mean to Meiling" more than "I hate you because you ruined my life".

>>45263128
It was never confirmed if the other mysterious figure that came along with Utsuho when bringing him to the shrine was Koishi, although that does sound likely in retrospect But it is confirmed that the two met in Old Hell, where he accidentally stepped on her face and upset her enough to steal the clothes Hecatia made him.

>>45263294
I thought it was Reisen.

>>45263318
I don't think it was ever confirmed or later elaborated upon, so it very well might be. But the fact that it was never brought up again and there was absolutely no reason for her to be there sounds pretty on brand for Koishi

>>45260088
>>45260945
>>45261027
Remilia is my least favorite character in canon because I can't stand her attitude and she's in every goddamn entry ever. Everything she does (even moments of altruism) comes across as ultimately brought forth by self-interest and narcissism, and she's surrounded by yes men that create a perpetual feedback loop of her acting insufferable.
My personal biases against SDM due to their ridiculous overuse in fanworks initially made me against her appearing (or any of them really), but now I wonder how the author will handle her. Perhaps he could give Remilia the humility and compassion she needs for me to find her dumb antics amusing rather than annoying.
Imagine if she initially gloated about causing one of Gensokyo's worst incidents, driven by her usual god complex. But after seeing the normally mild mannered Anon get immensely hurt and outraged, she bring herself down to his level, comforts him, and expresses remorse over the lives she's ruined. Almost like a foil to Satori, who unrepentantly used his traumatic memories to further her own ends.

>>45264248
>I wonder how the author will handle her
Not putting her in the story
Also, I don't think she's the same vampire that caused the incident

>>45264284
no, she is, that's touhou canon
the vampire incident was caused by a vampire who had just come to gensokyo, ended with the creation of the spell card rules, and the same vampire was the first major incident to use the spell card rules in EoSD

>>45264284
>Not putting her in the story
lol sounds good to me

With a very disorientating sense of deja vu, I was awoken by a pillow hitting me in the face. I felt like I'd been having a nice dream, but clearly it hadn't been a lucid one because Doremy Sweet hadn't shown up to say cryptic things to me. The pillow made me jerk, which then made Yamame - Who I could see had been hit with a pillow as well - fall into her instinctual panic mode, and with a shout, I found myself dragged into a corner of the room by a wildly panicked spider. This also resulted in me being shoved into an awkward, kind of painful pose, but after a moment, I was able to poke Yamame enough times for her to get her wits about her again, at which point she dropped me like I was on fire. I fell to the ground and let out a long, pained groan. "What - You - Huh?" Yamame breathlessly stammered. "Wait...Oh. Um, sorry..." She mumbled to me, awkwardly patting my head, and I mumbled an agreement with my face pressed into the Shrine's floor.

"Calmed down?" I heard Reimu dryly ask, and I managed to roll my face across the floor so I could see her, standing at a horizontal angle from my position.

"Um, yes." Yamame said as I tried to stretch my body back out into a normal position. "Sorry."

"You don't need to keep apologizing." Reimu told her.

"Yes, er, okay. I just get startled easily." Yamame said, standing up straight. I rolled over onto my stomach and pulled myself up to my hands and knees, then finally got a chance to get my bearings. It was morning, and sunlight was pouring in through the open door of Reimu's room. The futons was a total mess, all over the place, but Yamame had dragged half of the one that we had been under along with her. "What's...?"

"Happening?" Reimu filled in for her. "Well, it's morning, and I've been up sweeping all the leaves that have fallen down overnight. Should only be a day or two more before the trees are bare." I asked her if she'd found it alright. "Well, you can tell me, since I left half of it for you!" My face must have fallen slightly, because Reimu scoffed at me. "Excuse me, who was the one to wake me up in the middle of the night, carrying her," Here, Reimu pointed at Yamame, who coughed surreptitiously, "And make me think that I was being attacked by a vengeful spirit?" When I had no forthcoming answer, she beamed. "Good! Now, go and get freshened up and dressed! And once you're done with the leaves, we can move on to the real punishment!" And then, in a move that rather surprised me, Reimu cheerfully strode over, took Yamame's arm, and led her off. "Come on, you. I'm dying for a break." Yamame looked at me, and I sighed in resignation, then dragged myself to my feet, stretching and sighing at a few satisfying pops in my back.

I was still wearing my trousers, and I was lucky since my coat had covered me from getting muddy when Reimu had thrown her gohei at me. The coat itself, I couldn't see, so I assumed that Reimu had probably taken it off with the rest of the laundry. Luckily, my sweater was still there, which was good because while it was a bright and sunny morning, it was still colder than ice outside, so I pulled it on gratefully, then stumbled off to Reimu's bathroom so I could try and clean myself up somewhat.

A few minutes later, I blearily stumbled out onto the veranda and exhaled, seeing my breath form clouds in front of me. Somehow, it was seeming like the morning was even colder than the night before had felt, and I'd been nice and warm earlier, with Reimu and Yamame all in bed with me. It had been comfortable and cosy, and I already wished it was still happening, because now I was starting to shiver. "Come on, come on!" Reimu sharply called, slapping me on the back. I hadn't even heard her approach, but there she was, standing next to me with a hand on her hip and another on her back. "If you don't, I might just have to turn Yamame into my personal seamstress instead of yours." I felt my mouth drop open and I stared at her. "What?" Reimu asked, then suddenly formed an 'O' shape with her mouth. "Oh, not like that, you idiot. I was threatening to kidnap her, and there you are, thinking..." Finally, she slapped me in the back of the head. "Get your mind out of the gutter!" I grumbled something about misleading words and physical violence, and Reimu snorted. "Please. I'm allowed." Which...Was more or less true. I'd let very few people get away with that, but Reimu was definitely one of them. "Now, will you please go and sweep your side of the courtyard?" Grumbling, I made use of the height difference between us to ruffle Reimu's hair and knock her ribbons askew before she could stop me, then turned and strolled off while she shouted something rude at me from behind.

Just as Reimu had said, the courtyard was perfectly divided in half, one half already clear and swept into a large pile of leaves, and the other half still completely full of leaves. Sighing glumly, I picked up the broom and got to work, reflecting that at least the work would warm me up some. And thankfully, the wind had more or less died off and it didn't seem like it was going to rain any time soon, so I could take my time and make sure I got all of the leaves into another pile on my side of the courtyard. During the period right after the storm, Reimu and I had swept the courtyard together, and we'd put all of the loose leaves into a pile and burnt it, but that had been just barely into Autumn, when the trees were still full, and half their contents weren't on the courtyard floor. This time, I thought, it would be dangerous to build too large a pile of leaves before burning it, so I decided to stick to my plan to build a second pile. Then, I got to work.

I was about halfway through the job when I began to hear whistling, coming from the stairs up to the torii gate. Curious, I wandered over, holding the broom in front of me like I was about to whack someone over the head with it. Eventually, whoever it was came into sight, revealing - Tenshi. We stared at each other for a moment, and then I did whack her over the head with the broom, just for good measure. "Ouch! What was that for!?" She cried, pulling her hat off to rub her head. I lowered the broom slowly, then shrugged and said that it seemed like the sort of thing that Reimu would have done. "You're getting way too cruel for your own good..." Tenshi mumbled, rubbing her head, so I sighed, placed the broom down, and opened my arms, inviting her for a hug. "Don't think this means I'm forgiving you." She muttered petulantly, even though she accepted the hug a moment later. After I'd apologized, Tenshi asked me what I was doing there, so I gave a short version of the events that had led to Yamame and I coming to the Shrine. "Wait, so you're stuck helping me? Wow, and you didn't even lose the bet!" Nevertheless, she looked pleased. "Hang on, so your spider is here too?" Tenshi, I reprimanded. You should really call her Yamame, or Miss Kurodani, or something. "I've barely even spoken to her!"

That made me pause, and I blankly stared at Tenshi. Really? "Yeah?" Tenshi replied, frowning. "Well, sort of. I saw her when I picked you up last week, but I didn't really get to talk to her." Oh, I remembered. She'd been, in my estimation, just a little bit rude. "I was not!" She told me, sharply, and I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, maybe a little. I'll be nice, this time." I didn't say anything, just stared a little more. "Really, really nice." Just a little more... "Extra nice!" Tenshi cried. I nodded sagely and told her that she better be, or it would be me she was answering to. "Yes, dad..." She told me, sarcastically, finally brushing past me. "Reimu's back there, right?" She asked me, and I nodded. "Alright, I'll see you in a bit." She waved, then wandered off, throwing her hat back on her head. I watched her go, then turned back around and knelt down to pick up my broom.

Fortunately, I was nearly done, and it was only a few minutes longer before there was a new pile of leaves sitting at the back of the courtyard, in line with the first pile. Stepping back to admire my work, I set the broom down against the edge of the Hall of Worship's veranda, then went to find Reimu.
Toward the back of the Hakurei Shrine was a small pond, and in that pond was a massive turtle named Genji. He was capable of speaking, but having grown old, had decided he was too lazy to do so, and was silent now, but you could still tell that he was intelligent when he looked at you. This, Reimu had told me during her illness. Now, I was surprised to see that Genji was out of the water and sunning himself on a rock where the sun could shine down on him. "Aren't you cold? I mean, I know the sun's there, but it's not exactly warm, gramps." I heard Reimu mutter as I headed down the veranda toward the back of the Shrine. It was funny to hear her call a turtle her grandfather, but it was also a reminder that she really didn't have any other family, which itself was sad.

"It's actually a lot better than it was last night." I heard Yamame comment. "I think my body shut down to preserve energy."

"...It does that?" Reimu asked, sounding bemused. Finally, I reached the end of the veranda and stepped off onto the ground below. The pond was situated behind the Hall of Worship, and Reimu's living space was to the side of it, so it left a fairly large open space at the back of the Shrine, which I supposed was what Reimu used for parties. Now, though, it was being used for laundry, because Reimu had set two large poles up, tied a string between then, and hung my coat over it. It looked like she'd cleaned it up slightly, which I was thankful for. "Ah, there you are!" She called, seeing me. "And Tenshi's here too, excel-!" But that was as far as she got before I had walked up to her and wrapped my arms around her tightly, which made her squeak, and after a moment, she let me hug her. I didn't really know why I had felt like doing that, but Reimu had slightly pink cheeks by the time I pulled away. "Right. Er, yes. Thanks." She mumbled, nodding her head over and over.

"How cute." I hear Tenshi mutter, though Yamame didn't say anything. I looked over at her. She was sat on the edge of the Hall of Worship's veranda, and Tenshi was there too, but a little further away and leaning against the veranda rather than sitting on it. Yamame gave me a comforting smile, so I decided to go and hug her as well, for good measure. She hugged me back tightly, and I almost didn't feel like letting go, though I managed eventually. "So, are we all getting hugs?" Tenshi asked, and I looked over at her and told her that she'd already gotten one. "Yeah, but they're nice." Which was true, I supposed, so I went and hugged her as well.

Finally, I was done and could look back over to Reimu and find out what was going on. "Done?" She asked me, and I nodded. "Good. So, your coat should be fine. I asked Yamame and she said that most stains should just come off with water, so that's good."

"Yes." Yamame said, getting up from the veranda. " Yes, it's...Well, I'll leave it at 'it'll clean up well', I suppose. "I made it to be durable, after all." It certainly seemed to be, and I was grateful as always. "Y-Yes, um, you're welcome." Yamame stammered slightly.

"Oh, can you two get any cuter?" I heard Tenshi mutter under her breath. "Right, so, I am nothing if not magnanimous, and I did lose our little bet, so..." Tenshi pushed away from the veranda and wondered over to Reimu. "What exactly are we doing to the Shrine?" Reimu opened her mouth, so Tenshi cut her off. "No keystones, I heard you the first time." She lazily said. "I'm sure you don't want Yakumo destroying the place again."

"That was your fault, because you put the keystone in without asking, and furthermore-!" Reimu began, and Tenshi sighed, then put her hand over Reimu's mouth until she gave up. "Fine. You can start by patching up the leaks in the ceiling." She muttered, turning and stomping off in the direction of the Hakurei Shrine's storage facility. "I think I've got some supplies left..." Before she could disappear, I yelled after her asking what she wanted me to do. "Sliding door!" She yelled back, not stopping, and a moment later, both her and Tenshi were out of sight. For whatever baffling reason, the Shrine's storage facility was located a distance from the actual Shrine itself, and if you were to get anything from it, you had to walk all the way around to reach it. Flying could mitigate some of that, but I couldn't imagine that every person to live on the Shrine's grounds could fly, which only made it more baffling.

"Sliding door?" Yamame repeated curiously, and I turned to her and paused when I saw her drinking a cup of tea. "What?" She asked me, and I pointed at the tea. "Huh?" She blankly looked at it, then back at me. "Oh! Er, Reimu offered to make me some." Never offered me any, I muttered under my breath. "Aw, but you were busy." Yamame smiled and patted the space next to her. "We can share." Smiling to myself, I did take a seat beside her, and she passed me the cup. I took a sip and sighed. Reimu's tea-making skills really were unrivalled. Passing the cup back to Yamame, I asked her how she was doing. "Fine, fine." She told me. "You're quite the worrier. I told you what would happen if I got cold, and the next thing I knew, I was falling and suddenly Reimu caught me. I had no idea what was happening!" I blushed slightly and looked down, mumbling something about how I'd been a little panicked about her getting worse. "I know, and it's very sweet of you." She patted my cheek, and I did feel better about it. "So, it looks like we're stuck here for a while." She spoke. "Well, I'm not having you leave your big sister alone in a cold and draughty shrine, and I don't want to leave you alone either, so I'd rather we both stay as long as Reimu is okay with it."

She really was just so good to me. "Oh, but I'll need to go and meet Miss Kagerou tomorrow..." Ah, that was right. The work that Kagerou wanted Yamame to do for her. Perhaps I could go for a shopping trip while I was there. I'd caught a glance in Reimu's pantry when I'd been tidying myself up after I woke up, and it hadn't looked particularly stocked. "I think ours could do with restocking, too...But I'll pay for that, if you and Reimu pay for hers." I was starting to get a little worried about both my financial situation and my freeloading, and Lady Hecatia was coming to mind again. I'd probably need to figure out a decision on that front soon.

Regardless, I agreed with Yamame and got to my feet before Reimu could come back and yell at me for nothing doing anything. "So, what exactly is she having you do?" Yamame asked me, and I shrugged. The last time I'd been here, there had been a bit of an issue with the sliding doors. They got caught on things, and even when they didn't, they rattled awfully and let in a chilly breeze, so I'd go and see if I couldn't fix that up. "Should I help?" I went to shake my head, but Yamame had already hopped to her feet and finished off her tea. "Don't forget, I've got plenty of experience with hands-on stuff. Who do you think makes plenty of the wooden planks that my sisters are using in the Hot Spring Town?" That was an excellent point, and something I'd forgotten about. "Well, come on, let's go and see what the problem is." I struggled to push the grin off my face and led her back to the sliding door outside Reimu's room.

Experimentally, I tried sliding it fully in both directions, and as I'd expected, it got caught on something. Most likely, there was just some sort of debris stuck on the track that the door slid across, so I decided to simply pull the whole door free and have a look behind it. "It might just be the wheel." Yamame commented. I looked over at her. "Look." She crouched down and pointed at the wheel that allowed the door to slide. "It might just be damaged. I mean, pull it out anyway, because there probably is debris back there, but it really might just need a replaced wheel." That, I said, would cost money that Reimu probably didn't have. "Oh. Er, yeah." Yamame frowned. "Okay, pull the door out. Hopefully it's just debris." Stepping forward, I slid the door off of the track it sat on and laid it down, before looking through the gap that the door slid in. It was dark, so I asked Yamame if she could see anything. "Er..." She squinted down the small gap. "Maybe? I think that's something." She looked around for something long and thin, settling on a long branch from the ground, then shoved it into the gap and scraped out some mouldy-looking leaves. "Ew." She commented, and I definitely agreed. "I guess it's hard to see that sort of thing."

Leaves disposed of, we refitted the door and were pleased to find that it now slid properly. "Well, that was an easy fix, at least. What about the others?" I shook my head and told her that I could handle the others myself. "Are you trying to get rid of me?" She asked me with a grin. I shook my head and said that I could handle this, but it was supposed to be a punishment and I didn't want Reimu to be getting free labour out of Yamame as well. She'd get a big head. "You sure?" She asked me, and I nodded, telling her to go and relax in the sunshine while I arduously pulled out all the doors and checked behind them all for debris keeping them from closing properly. "Hmm..." She hummed, and I seriously told her that I wanted her to relax. Call it repayment for all the work she'd done for me. Finally, I promised to repay her properly once we were home from the Shrine. "Oh, alright. If you insist." She backed off toward the door, though she kept shooting me suspicious looks, until she finally stepped outside and disappeared, only to poke her head back around the side a moment later and shoot me one last look.

In truth, it wasn't for that reason that I sent her away. Rather, it was because the other door I'd been checking let me see down the corridor of the Shrine. And I was very concerned about the tear in reality I could see at the end of it, complete with two large bows tying it off. I saw the strange space in the middle begin to flicker and darken, and then something came barrelling through it, spinning down the corridor until it landed, revealing itself to be small, red and white, and with two long tails and the ears of a cat. Following behind it, far more normally, was someone I recognized. Imposingly tall, with nine expertly cared for tails and sharp, dangerous eyes, was Hearn's Shikigami. She wore her long tabard over a white dress with wide sleeves that had interesting stitching along the edges, and both of which were currently folded in front of her so that her hands were invisible, somewhere underneath.

"Look, Lady Ran, I landed it perfectly!" The small-red-and-white thing cheered, spinning around to look at what I could only assume to be her master. "I didn't even fall!"

"Very good, Chen." Her master, Ran, replied. "But I fear that we are not alone, and it would do no good to forget your manners, would it?" She stepped out of the corridor, turning her sharp, dark yellow eyes on me. "Greetings, associate of the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. My master sends her regards."

I looked back at the door that I had been about to pull down, then stood and turned to Ran instead. I bowed and told her that I offered Hearn my greetings too. "Hello!" Chen, the small cat, said to me, brightly. "My name is Chen! I'm a shikigami in service of Lady Ran!" She was barely up to my navel, but the seriousness that she tried to impart on the sentence despite her small statue and the way she delivered it made it slightly hard to take it seriously. I introduced myself. "I know! I saw you in the Borderlands two times." That, I thought, sounded like the red-and-white thing I'd seen rushing toward me while falling through what I'd come to describe as Hearn's nightmare realm.

"Chen, why don't you go and look for Reimu?" Ran told her shikigami, nodding to the door. "I've need of him before I speak to Reimu." She turned her gaze to me, and I felt that primal part of my mind whisper that she was incredibly powerful. Somehow, I'd never felt the same sensation that I got from Ran when speaking to Hearn.

"Yes, Lady Ran!" Chen replied, then turned and ran out of the door at speed. Yamame was going to be in her way, I realised. I hoped it wouldn't turn to a fight, but I couldn't exactly go and check with Ran staring at me.

What had seemed to be a nice few days fixing up the Shrine were now looking far more complex.

>>45256889
s-she's still there
or somewhere...

CHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEN

>>45265331
this cat WILL save your SOUL

>>45264888
Ran at least has the decency to politely approach and greet Anon instead of randomly abducting him like her master. I think it'll go fine.

>>45265331
chen chen chen chen chen chen

>>45265634
>Chen upon seeing Yams

What does Yukari want now?

>>45262142
Anon should help Meiling retire from her toxic work environment to go work with best flower instead

>>45265776
She probably wants to help with the shrine, either that or she wants an update on the Eiein situation.

>>45264888
Good, now that Chen is here everything will be fine

>>45241089
What are you smoking? hse is just downright terrible no matter how you look at it and that's not even taking into consideration how the true OG story wasn't even good at all

>>45266873
What was wrong with the OG?

>>45263253
When Okuu brought him to the shrine and there was someone he couldn't identify to her side.

>>45266873
Thats just like, your opinion man...

>>45267235
NTA, and I assume OG in this case refers to the abuse story. Spelling and grammar errors were common enough to make it harder to follow, the plot had uneven pacing and I disagree with many of the decisions, and I think the author's prose could get rather repetitive. That being said, he excels at eliciting emotional reactions and giving vivid descriptions, and occasionally his wording can be extremely clever, which is especially impressive if he's an ESL.
Overall, it did exceed my (admittedly low) expectations, and I ended up thinking it was okay. Made me sadder and hornier than I expected to be.

>>45267562
I do believe that was his first fic, he did get better
If he went back and redid it, maybe unfuck the harem shit and fix the grammar it would be a better story overall

>>45264866
>She'd been, in my estimation, just a little bit rude. "I was not!" She told me, sharply, and I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, maybe a little. I'll be nice, this time." I didn't say anything, just stared a little more. "Really, really nice." Just a little more... "Extra nice!" Tenshi cried. I nodded sagely and told her that she better be, or it would be me she was answering to. "Yes, dad..." She told me, sarcastically, finally brushing past me.
Tenko's daddy issues shine through once again.
Looking forward to more Yakumo family antics.

>>45267685
Her and Marisa were made for each other, daddy issues galore with those two...
Do they call each other daddy?

>>45268118
They take turns doing it.

>>45268184
hot

If you want to argue about the HSE, go to the HSE threads when they hit bump limit.
Otherwise just make an HSE hate thread, just stio shitting up these threads with offtopic shit.

>>45267415
Is koishi here?

>>45271083
>It seemed like the answer hadn't been satisfactory to Reimu, who clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Ugh, birdbrains." She stepped back, to the centre of the room. "Okay, you," The gohei pointed at Okuu, who let out a strange noise that sounded something like 'Unyu?', "You," Now it was at Miss Tenshi, "And you," It was pointed to my left, where the wings were obscuring my view, "The weather won't affect you, so go and find somewhere else to loiter." Then, she pointed it at Marisa. "And you, lie down, shut up, and don't move." I heard general sounds of movement, and felt a slight breeze as the door opened.

>Whoever had been standing on the other side of Okuu's wing had left first, and I didn't know who it was. Maybe Aunn? Or Lady Kasen?
I think they're referring to this

>>45271197
Makes sense, but who would it be here? >>45271083

>>45271229
Aunn

>>45271245
makes sense, kek

>>45271245
Aunn has gone horribly under used in this story, it's my one big gripe with this amazing journey.

Hearn's Shikigami was tall. It was one of the first things I'd noticed when I'd first met her, but now that she was inside the Shrine, it was becoming blindly obvious. The tips of her hat - And I assumed that there were the ears of a fox underneath - brushed against the ceiling, and I looked at the door and realised that she'd have to crouch even more than I did to get through without hitting her head. I'd wager that she was just a little taller than me, but the ears added a lot more to her height.

"My master, the one you know as Hearn, sends me with a message." Ran told me, her voice well controlled and calm. "It is twofold: First, I am to assist in any way I can with winter maintenance for the Shrine. This includes repairs, replacements, and reconstruction." I raised an eyebrow at that, surprised that Hearn would bother going to such efforts. But then, I remembered that she had referred to Reimu as 'her Shrine Maiden' on the first occasion that I'd met her. I doubted it was as true as she implied since Reimu had never once behaved like she had a master of her own to follow, but perhaps she did have some sort of responsibility to assist Reimu, or more likely, the Hakurei Shrine as a whole. "Second, I am to inquire into the outcome of the Eientei Investigation that you and your compatriots partook in, as part of an effort to understand the events that took place, what led up to them, and how to stop them from happening again." That seemed understandable, even if Hearn hadn't had any reservations about kidnapping me to get those very answers previously. Curious, and fairly confident that Ran wasn't planning to hurt me, I asked her why Hearn hadn't come for me herself.

And here was the first crack in Ran's shields, because her eyes flickered away for a split second and she grit her teeth, before forcing impassiveness onto her face again. "Lady Y- Hearn is busy preparing for the coming winter and could not spare the time to see you today. She extends her apologies and promises to catch up with you soon." Which sounded like an excuse if I'd ever heard one, but I just nodded to indicate my understanding. Actually, not only did it sound like an excuse, it opened me up to the possibility of getting kidnapped again in the near future. "Did you have any more questions?" Ran asked me. I paused for a moment, then I asked her why she'd brought a child - Chen - along with her. "Chen is my shikigami. She is capable in these matters, though she may be young, and she must learn her place as an aide to Lady Hearn."

I decided to employ my favourite technique of Lady Kasen's and stared at Ran. She held admirably, but once I crossed my arms and tilted my head downward slightly, she began to break. Perhaps, I thought, it was because the pose was very Reimu-esque. "Chen needed some fresh air and I needed a break from...No, never mind." Ran finally muttered in an aggrieved voice, though I wondered if she'd cut herself off at the end because she'd been about to give away something to me about Hearn's true identity.

I hummed in understanding, then told her that I was happy to listen to her if she wanted to complain. I couldn't really explain why I had said it, because it had been somewhat impulsive, but I was started to get a track record of doing things like this, so I decided to just roll with it. Listening to people's problems was starting to become a hobby of mine. Ran looked at me curiously. "You are rather strange, aren't you?" I laughed a little, shook my head, then said that I was told that a lot. Still smiling, I led Ran over to the table and asked her if she would like some tea, which she agreed to.

I may not have had Reimu's supernatural skills for tea-brewing, but I did have several painful hours of it being drilled into my very soul by Lady Kasen, which I hoped would be similarly helpful. So, a few minutes later, I was returning to the table that Ran kneeled at, and I offered her a cup, which she accepted gratefully. Before I sat down, I pulled the sliding door shut, to give us some slight privacy. "My thanks." She quietly told me, taking a sip. "As I said, I am here to gather some information on the Eientei Investigation on my master's behalf." She took another sip, followed by yet another. I got the impression that she liked it. Taking the opportunity, I asked her if there was another reason that Hearn hadn't kidnapped me again. "Ah." Ran said, placing her cup on the table. As she did so, I noticed a tiny gap in reality form directly under the cup and between the table, and through it I could see a different, metallic surface. "It's only polite to avoid placing a drink directly on a table as a guest." Ran told me when she caught me looking.

"My master's current business is somewhat private business, so I'm afraid that I must refrain from explaining at this time. Suffice to say, my master is currently indisposed and delegated her work to me in her stead." I asked Ran if that meant that Hearn usually handled these Shrine visits. "No, it's always-" She began, then realised what she was saying and clamped her mouth shut. I felt a wide grin threaten to split my face open at catching her out. "Urgh." Ran muttered, rubbing her forehead. "Certain tasks, my master finds, are best left to my discretion, and of those tasks, some do I then further delegate to Chen."

Speaking of Chen, I wondered what the small shikigami was doing. "Reimu must be consulted on Shrine maintenance, and she will report back to me once she is done." Ran made it sound like that was all there was to it, but I had a feeling that Ran had a second reason for sending her out of the room. "Chen is still young." Ran said, sipping at her tea again. "She is maturing quickly, but I still feel that some things must be kept from her for her healthy development." Ran gave me a pointed look. "Such as the specifics of the Eientei Investigation, including any gory details." She certainly seemed to care a lot about Chen. I remembered the way that Hearn had spoken of Ran, and it hadn't had quite the same sort of warmth to it. "Chen is my charge, and I intend to raise her well." Ran told me, and I nodded understandingly. I was about to ask her what she wanted to know, when I started to hear some faint shouting from outside. I caught a slight flick from Ran's hat, which further proved my theory that there were the ears of a fox underneath, and Ran looked over at me. "It appears that Chen has run afoul of the local komainu." She told me gravely. "I knew they should have built a fox instead."

That would be Aunn, I realised. In fact, it could possibly be both Aunns, which could be bad. I looked up at Ran and said that Aunn was probably feeling territorial, but she was kind-hearted and I doubted that she would do any real harm. Ran didn't look entirely convinced, but the shouting soon stopped, so I assumed that someone - Probably Yamame - had resolved the problem.

I would like to know all the pertinent details that have happened since your last visit to us." In Australia? The mention caused Ran to look away with some annoyance. "So hot." She muttered under her breath, and I agreed wholeheartedly, though it had been breathtaking in a way that few places in the valley or the village could. "Perhaps to you, who got to sit and look out of the balcony with the air conditioning running instead of overseeing the cooking of your meals in that furnace of a kitchen." Suddenly I felt like I'd said something wrong, and Ran looked a little more annoyed than she had before. I supposed that she might have been annoyed because she'd wanted to relax like Hearn had, but hadn't been allowed to. And, of course, Hearn had eaten - or at least, appeared to have eaten - human flesh, rather disturbingly, so I couldn't imagine getting that meal cooked in a busy kitchen full of other humans could have been easy.

"Never mind. The deed is done. Now, explain to me what happened in regards to Eientei in the time since Australia." Ran's voice had taken on that slightly more clinical, cold tone that it had been in the beginning. "Every detail." She told me, tilting her head downward slightly and favouring me with her sharp eyes. "I already know that you had a meeting with Eirin Yagokoro in Eientei, and you had another one more recently. You may gloss over the exact details if you feel they are too personal, but I want to know the details in at least broad strokes."

I hoped Yamame was having a better time than me.


Yamame was having a rather boring time of it. She knew her human had meant well, but Reimu was still off doing who-knows-what with that ex-celestial, and as a result, she was just...sitting. At the back of the Hakurei Shrine. Where the main blessings were youkai extermination. What a strange situation. And yet, it was still fairly comfortable. It was chilly, but the sun still shone done pleasantly, even if Yamame's body could handle the cold just fine. She'd gotten dressed and cleaned up while her human had been cleaning the courtyard, so it wasn't as if she was just wearing a kimono either. Just as long as that silly man didn't try and carry her off somewhere even stranger than the Hakurei Shrine.

She caught the eye of that strange turtle that was sat on a large rock surrounding the pond, seemingly basking in the sun's rays. "Um, hello?" She ventured, wondering if she looked slightly silly. The turtle lifted its - Or was it his? - head and stared over at Yamame as if he was confused. Well, as confused as a turtle could look, anyway. "My, er, name is Yamame Kurodani." She continued, wondering if she was looked more than a little silly. "I'm with that man you saw earlier. Are you really Reimu's grandfather?" She asked the question as if it was even possible, but...Stranger things had happened. Yamame had fallen in love with a human. That was strange enough.

The turtle's ancient-looking mouth opened, and for a moment, Yamame felt her heart flutter. Was he really about to speak to her? He'd even ignored Reimu, who was supposedly his grandchild.

But then, she heard footsteps, and was surprised enough to stumble back onto the veranda that she had just been sitting on when a red-and-white-but-not-Reimu thing came sprinting around the corner, taking absolutely no notice of her. It - No, she, for the small thing was a child-like cat youkai, was running for what seemed to be her life, and Yamame had no clue what she was witnessing. "Miss Reimu! Miss Reimu, there's a weird cat running around here!" Yamame's head turned from the cat youkai to the place she had run from, and this time, it was to see a slightly-less-small-but-still-not-Reimu green thing sprinting after her, her sandals making a clacking sound against the stones of the path around the Shrine. "Stay still or I'll start blasting!" The green thing yelled. Yamame stared at it, completely bemused. It looked like a komainu statue, which Yamame knew were a thing at a shrine, but they typically weren't youkai.

"I'm not weird!" The cat youkai shouted back. "I'm gonna tell Lady Ran about you and she's gonna make you pay!" Still, the chase continued, and first the cat youkai disappeared around the other side of the Hall of Worship, and the komainu followed a second later.

"She'll probably confuse me for a fox too! Maybe she's got some fried tofu!" The komainu's voice echoed back from wherever the strange pair had disappeared to. "Now get back here and pay for trespassing, you fiend!"

Yamame blinked twice, then pinched herself. Nope, not dreaming. Strange things certainly seemed to be happening around her lately. Personally, she blamed her human. He always seemed to have something strange happening around him. Another shout caught her attention, coming from the direction that the pair of animal youkai had disappeared, and Yamame watched curiously. First came the cat youkai, shouting her head off. "You're cheating! That's cheating!" And then, in a move that really made Yamame wonder if she was dreaming, not one, but two komainu burst out of the path around the side of the Hall of Worship, both identical in appearance but not in temperament, because one of them looked far more annoyed and slightly violent than the others.

"It's not cheating! You should have done your research before you tried to intrude on the Shrine! Aunn Komano will always keep this Shrine safe for Miss Reimu!" The less annoyed komainu yelled. That seemed to be her name, then. Yamame had spent a lot of time watching her own younger sisters do something very similar to this, and she knew that it usually ended in tears if it wasn't broken up first, and the whole thing was starting to tickle at her elder sister sensibilities, so before she really realised what she was doing, she'd gotten up. The former duo, now trio of animal youkai were already back out of sight, so Yamame got to work setting up a trap. It was short and quick work, just a few lines of webbing anchored to the back of the Hall of Worship and the ground with what she hoped was just enough webbing to catch the rowdy youkai, but she hoped that in the bright sunlight and with the distraction, the whole thing would be fairly unnoticeable until it had served its purpose.

Then, she waited, and on the next go around, she was pleased to see that the cat youkai was looking over her shoulder instead of where she was going, and the two komainu were both focused on her instead of the path ahead. Even happier, the two Aunn Komano's had caught up right in time for all three of them to go flying into the webbing at the same time, and while it did break, it had served its purpose and knocked all three of them to the ground. Now, Yamame put on her 'Big Sister Yamame' voice, honed from years of dealing with Nai and her other troublesome sisters. "Excuse me!" She called, stepping off of the Hall of Worship's veranda with her hands on her hips. "Is it not rather rude to be so rowdy in a place of worship?"

The three looked up at her in confusion, though the angrier Aunn looked ready to throw a few punches. "Um..." The less angry Aunn began. "Are you...attacking us?" She continued slowly. "Are you an intruder too!? Miss Reimu! Miss Reimu, there's-!"

At that point, there was a new noise. The stomping of shoes. Looking up, Yamame saw the source. "Aunn!" Reimu shouted, her hands on her hips. "What the hell are you doing!?"

Aunn froze, then twisted her head to see Reimu, who was standing on the path down to the storage room and looked very annoyed. "Just, um, chasing an intruder, Miss Reimu! Then another intruder attacked me!" She cried back, pointing first at Chen, then at Yamame in turn. The angrier Aunn, curiously, didn't seem to want to speak to anyone, but she was definitely letting Yamame know her displeasure and probable imminent death. If looks could kill... "I don't know where she came from, but I'll get rid of her!"

"An intru..." Reimu trailed off, taking in the sight of Chen, who was still on the ground. "Oh for - That's not an intruder, Aunn! That's Chen! Ran's shikigami or whatever! Just let her do whatever weird task she's here to do or I'll have Yukari bugging me for hours when she can't even be bothered to show up for so much as a How-do-you-do!" Reimu looked between everyone. "Are you dealing with this?" She asked Yamame, who opened her mouth and stammered something random. "Good! Aunn, leave Chen alone, and no messing with Yamame either. She's welcome here! Attack her, and you'll upset my brother, and that'll upset me!" Reimu had apparently taken her answer as a yes. "I'm busy! Tenshi's decided that she knows better than me about what's in my own storeroom and has started throwing things around." And with that, she spun on her heel and stomped off.

The two Aunns got to their feet and dusted themselves off. "Just trying to help, Miss Reimu..." The nicer one muttered. She looked at Yamame, and the angrier one did the same, but slightly more threatening. "You tripped us!" She accused.

"Er, well, yes, I suppose I did." Yamame replied, still a little confused about the whole thing. "But you were chasing someone who was just trying to do their work. That's rather mean, you know." Aunn looked at her with some suspicion. "I'm sure you've got important work, too. How would you feel if someone starting attacking you in the middle of it?"

The angry Aunn, while still not speaking, didn't look very convinced, but the nicer Aunn had calmed down a little. "...Not great." Yamame gave her a look, then told her to apologize. It seemed to take some effort, but Aunn did look over at Chen after a few moments. "...Sorry." She muttered, turning and stomping off, her angry twin following soon after.

That left Yamame with Chen, who had picked herself up and dusted down her clothes. "Um, thank you." Chen said hesitantly. "I was meant to be looking for Reimu, but that komainu found me first." She picked up her hat, which had fallen off, and checked it over, then sighed in relief. "Not torn..." She mumbled, putting it back on her head between her ears. Then, she looked at Yamame again. She squinted. Her eyes slowly travelled down Yamame's dress, taking in the design. "Are - Are you a spider, Miss...?" Her eyes were widening. This was starting to seem suspicious in a different way.

"Yes...?" Yamame ventured. Rarely had someone asked a question like that in an excited tone rather than a fearful one. The only one she could see doing so was her human, but he was a strange case at the best of times, so she wasn't sure if he counted or not.

Chen's eyes widened even more, and she took in an excited breath. "Wow, really!?" This had officially gone beyond Yamame's wheelhouse and ventured into the unknown. "You're so pretty! And - And the pattern of your dress, that's the pattern of the kind of spider you are, isn't it? Is it an Argiope? A - A funnel weaver? Orb weaver?" The questions were coming fast, and Yamame definitely couldn't keep up, so she took a different approach.

"Miss Chen?" Chen's mouth snapped shut at Yamame' voice, and Yamame took the moment to breathe. "Are you really here to ask me about the minutiae of being a spider?" She injected a little humour into her voice, otherwise Chen might feel like she was dismissing her.

"O-Oh, um, no, but...Reimu said she was busy, and Lady Ran's talking with that guy in there..." Chen pointed at Reimu's room in the Shrine. "I'm, um, sorry for getting overexcited."

"That's okay, Chen. I don't mind. So, you like spiders?" Yamame asked with a smile, inviting Chen to sit on the veranda with her. It was surprisingly easy to talk to a child - even a youkai child, especially compared to how tongue-tied she became around the oni of legend like Yuugi Hoshiguma, Suika Ibuki and Kasen Ibaraki.
"Y-Yes! Lady Ran gave me a book on spiders as a present for doing really good at manipulating big data recently and I found it really interesting, but then I finished it and I couldn't find another so I asked Lady Yukari if she knew anything about spiders but she said that she'd never really thought about it so I tried to-" She was babbling, and while Yamame found her rather cute, it was a little much.

"Chen." She said, and Chen quietened down. Big data? Yamame wasn't really sure what that was. "I can tell you a few things, I suppose. My name is Yamame Kurodani. I am a spider youkai, yes. A kogane-gumo, if you were wondering." Chen had said something before she’d suggested funnel weaver. Arhg-ee-ope. She didn’t recognize the term, and it didn’t even sound like Japanese. Was it an outside world term? Hearn certainly seemed capable of having her shikigami fetch a book from the outside world. Perhaps it was a foreign language. English? She’d heard English in the Scarlet Devil Mansion, back when she’d been working on the renovations there.

She did something then that she rarely did, because frankly, she didn't have enough space to. She allowed her additional limbs to manifest. Four limbs appeared from her back, and she demonstrated her control over each one. It wasn't something she'd done in front of her human yet, at first out of fear that he'd reject her, and now just out of convenience, because with an extra pair of hands in their home, she hadn't really needed to use her additional limbs. Usually, she didn't even use the real limbs, but allowed them to essentially inhabit four striped pieces of her outfit which allowed her to manipulate them as if they were her own limbs. Still, Chen looked suitably amazed, and didn't seem to know where to look. After a few moments, she let the limbs fade back into their usual state and raised her hands. "Is there something in particular you want to ask me?" She asked, then immediately regretted it when Chen launched into another volley of questions, some of which were so barely related that she wasn't sure where Chen had come up with them.

Idly, she wondered if her human’s conversation was going as strangely as hers was. He couldn’t beat her in confusion after that strange chase, she was certain about that.

I was wondering when he was going to introduce Koishi

>>45273150
>The turtle's ancient-looking mouth opened, and for a moment, Yamame felt her heart flutter. Was he really about to speak to her?
We were THIS CLOSE to getting dialogue from Genjii

>>45272276
>Aunn has been horribly underutilised
Well look who just showed up

With Genji anon has met 1/3 of the males of Gensokyo. Now only Urizen and Rinusuke to go.

>>45273565
>Urizen
Meant Unzan, Urizen is the dude from Devil May Cry 5 lol i am terrible with japanese names.

>>45273163
>>45273157
CHEEEN!! I think you got the wrong cat, writefren! That spider-loving, autism ridden cat is from the HSE!
thanks for the reference! Sorry for the corniness, but it seriously melted my heart man, fugg! Swear I'll treat Yams with utmost respect there!

Yamame knows how to deal with children, that's good since she's going to have a hundred of them in a few months

>>45273139
>Perhaps, I thought, it was because the pose was very Reimu-esque.
And now he's also starting to pick up on Reimu's behaviors. This "imitating those he looks up to" aspect is one of my favorite personality quirks of his, I find it really sweet.

I noticed that this chapter highlights the differences between Ran and Yukari, with tidbits like how she views Chen and how Anon was willing to listen to her frustrations with Yukari. I wonder if Ran will have an arc of sorts, where she has more of an established personality than "Yukari's computer fox thing". Think it follows how 19 revealed more details about Ran, like originally being a beast from the Animal Realm with connections to Yuuma.

>>45273445
Yamame interacting with Genji is something I never thought I would see

>>45273335
Probably something involving the clothes that she stole

>>45280939
She did say it was a gift for Satori

>>45274311
She may very well if anything as a nice gesture from ZUN to toby

>>45281614
Oh, I meant an arc within the context of this story. The additional attention drawn to the Yakumos lately, with 19's Ran scenario and Chen getting some attention in CDS means it might be possible that there's more for them down the line, but we have yet to see.
I personally don't think Don't Call Me Radiation necessarily had anything to do with her inclusion. It might be possible there's some influence, but I wouldn't call it the catalyst.

>>45281775
nah, toby's comments came after ZUN submitted the master version of the game
it's more likely that ZUN told toby that ran was in, and toby took the opportunity to publicly ask for her to be in, knowing that she already was, so everyone would attribute her inclusion to him

>>45281800
Considering Zun is the same guy who make Sunken Fossil world because a kid at his kids school likes Flan, and Toby is a personal friend of ZUN, I think it's more likely Toby asked but only said anything after the master version was submitted.

Explaining everything that had occurred regarding Eientei had ended up taking longer than I'd anticipated and as a result, I was starting to feel rather hungry despite only being about halfway through. I had just finished describing the meeting at the Hakurei Shrine, where Tenshi had thrown Marisa into the floor and Reimu had hit Tenshi on the head with her gohei when Ran looked at me intently and then raised a hand. "Do you need a break?" She asked me, and though I tried to play it cool and say that I was fine, Ran shook her head. "Dehydration and hunger can interfere with your memories, so it is important that you stay hydrated and well fed. I can get you something to eat."

And with that, Ran raised her arm and plunged it into one of those tears in reality with the bows tying it off. She must have seen me staring, because she - in defiance of the attempts to remain cold and emotionless - couldn't seem to help smirking a little. "Lady Hearn's control of gaps can be passed down to me, her shikigami, as and when I need to make use of it." She focused on whatever she was doing with her arm, and then retracted it to reveal...A gyudon bowl. Ribbon-like strips of beef served with onions, spring onions, and rice, and an egg yolk right in the centre. "Direct from a street cart that Lady Hearn discovered in the early hours of the morning on the streets somewhere in Nagoya." Ran told me, pushing it over to me and extracting some money from another gap with her other hand, which she then pushed through the first gap. "Lady Hearn has informed me that I am not to explain how or why the food was ready and waiting. For mystique, as she puts it." It seemed like Ran had given away some of the mystique already, but I was willing to forget that in favour of eating the food, which turned out to be the greatest gyudon I'd ever eaten, and I'd eaten in a lot of places in the village, so that was certainly saying something. It also seemed a little like Ran was willing to, very slightly, undermine Hearn's mystique with how dryly she had explained why she would not be undermining Hearn's mystique.

In fact, it was so good that I ate the whole thing, and that was quite the feat for me. I looked up to see that Ran had refilled my tea cup and pushed it back across to me. I drained the whole thing. "It does seem to creep up on you, doesn't it?" Ran asked mildly, eyeing the empty cup and the empty bowl. After a moment, she took back the bowl, sent it back through her gap, and had returned to watching me. I thanked her and fumbled in my pockets for some money to pay her back with, only for her to raise her hand. "Your money's no good over there." She said, nodding at the gap, which then closed. "Now, shall we continue?" I asked her if I could ask her some questions first, because my burning curiosity about not just Hearn, but Ran and Chen themselves was taking hold of me. "...If you must." She slowly replied, and that only made me take more interest. She sounded like she didn't want to talk about her past, which only made me more curious, especially since I was already getting no answers from Hearn about who exactly she was. The lot of them were nothing but a mystery to me, even if Reimu seemed to know a lot more about them than she was letting on.

So I decided to start slowly and asked her why Hearn wouldn't tell me who she really was. "Is that truly relevant?" She replied, just the tiniest amount sharper. It would help me trust her more, I replied. "...Lady Hearn has told me that I am to answer your relevant questions. This, I feel, is not entirely relevant." I thought it was, but I decided to move past it and onto the next question, which was why Hearn was engaging in these cloak-and-dagger schemes instead of just coming and talking to me directly. "Lady Hearn has a great number of matters which require her attention. This is why Chen and I act as her representatives and aid her in handling some of these responsibilities." That was about what I'd expected, but Reimu's habit of bursting into laughter when I explained what happened when Hearn kidnapped me had me suspecting that there was something more to it, or perhaps that Hearn was the socially awkward type, but with far too much power and desire to manipulate things for her own good. I didn't say that out loud, though, because it would be more than a little rude. Instead, I tried asking if Hearn was her real name. "Do you need me to answer that?" Ran asked dryly, and I responded that no, I probably didn't.

Moving on, I asked her if Chen was really a child or just acted like one. "Youkai do not age like humans. Maturity is not so easy to measure, either. She would be an adult by your standards, but yes, she is essentially a child." Ran didn't seem entirely pleased with the question but forced it down. "Any more questions?"

Now, I couldn't resist, so I asked her how long she had been serving Hearn. "Next question." She replied stiffly. My eyes widened slightly. That had been a very different response. I decided to remark that while Ran talked about Chen like she was practically her daughter, Hearn had spoken of Ran more like she was a useful tool. "What are you trying to ask?" Ran said, her voice now far too calm for her to actually be calm. "If Lady Hearn considers me her tool, then that is what I am." I probably should have stopped, but I couldn't quite stop myself. This was why I needed Yamame or Reimu or someone around, to keep me from asking stupid questions because I just couldn't help myself. No wonder I'd ended up in Eientei so much. Finally, I asked what Ran had been doing before becoming Hearn's shikigami, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Ran slammed a fist against the table hard enough to shake it. "Ain't none of yer business, so shut the hell up!" She shouted, and I fell silent immediately, though my amazement at the change in her entire demeanour was enough to keep me silent. Her eyes were even sharper now, and they were slightly wild, and her entire posture had shifted from the stiff, upright posture that I presumed a shikigami of Hearn required to something loose, which reminded me of the sort of poses that Raki used, slightly hunched, but doing absolutely nothing to hide her strength. Ran was looking the same way now. "I got sent here to ask you questions, not so you could yammer on at me about my past as if it had anything to do with yer Eientei problems!" I raised my hands in surrender, but it seemed that she'd had a lot of bottled-up emotions, because she wasn't stopping now. "Ya think I ain't got better things to do!? I have to find Reimu and fix this stupid Shrine for Winter because my boss is too lazy to do it herself but instead I'm here listening to you question me about things that don't matter! In my day I only needed to deal with human spirits who'd do whatever I asked and now I've got to deal with you asking me question after question! Ain't never had this problem with Toutet-" She froze as if she'd finally realised what she was saying, and her mouth clamped shut tightly along with some very slight panic making an appearance in her eyes.

I kept my hands raised and very slowly, very carefully, apologised for pushing too far, then asked her if she would like me to leave. "...No." She finally muttered, sinking to an even less refined posture. "No, I'm sorry. I lost my temper. That's - That's the old me. I left that behind." The old her? She glared at me. "I won't talk about it. It'd be disobeying Lady Hearn even if I wanted to. Suffice to say, I was a different person in the past." I tried placatingly nodding. I'd become practically a different person now compared to how I had been when I had first met Marisa, so I understood what she meant. Still, Ran seemed to want to reassure me, and I got the sense that she'd never spoken to anyone at all about this. "You must have similar feelings toward your own past." She knew about that? "Know? Of course I know. She was there, after all." Ran's voice brokered no further questioning. "Our futures are anyone's guess, but we can insist upon our past." Ran's voice was sharp, but her eyes were somewhere far away. I agreed with her about our past. It was primarily the reason that I couldn't bring myself to properly dislike Satori Komeiji. She'd unlocked my most traumatic memories not for me, but for her own personal curiosity, but those memories were mine, and I needed to keep them with me.

Ran had mentioned human spirits, like...the dead kind. "Urgh." Ran groaned. "I got carried away. There are realms beyond Hell. I'll leave it at that." Like where those animal mob bosses that Reimu had pointed out during that party in the summer were from? Ran stared at me. "You...are dangerously well-informed for a human from the village. If it wasn't for Reimu's interest in you...No, never mind." I didn't much like the sound of that. If it wasn't for Reimu's interest in me, then what? I'd gone on a lot of strange dates and nearly all of them had either ended badly or resulted in me discovering something new - and then ending badly for good measure. "Lady Hearn has kept an eye on you from when you were spotted within the vicinity of the goddess of Hell. I believe that she wanted to learn why Reimu was so intent on keeping you safe, more so than other villagers in the past."

Based on everything I'd seen of Hearn and of Reimu's reaction to her, I expected that there was something more...Embarrassing involved, like she was honestly just really concerned for Reimu's wellbeing but had to disguise it under a lot of mystique, kidnapping, and grandeur. It seemed to fit with the way she'd acted about my plan to convince Yamame to stop eating human flesh back in the storm, when she'd said that she hoped that Yamame succeeded, but only after lecturing me on how she liked eating everything, including human. It was...a strange conversation in retrospect, but I had been mostly worried about being trapped somewhere weird at the time, so I hadn't really focused on it. Finally, I focused back on Ran, who'd seemingly managed to get herself out of the past and back into the present. I slowly asked her if we were good. "...Yes, we're good. I lost my temper over questions that you didn't understand why you shouldn't have asked. Just...Let's start again." She sat up straighter, inhaling deeply. "Tell me the rest of the Eientei Investigation." She said, her voice slipping back toward the calmer and more collected Ran that I'd begun the conversation with.

So I continued, and I continued until I was done. I explained my part in Eientei, then I explained what Reimu had told me and what Tenshi and Marisa had told me about their parts in Eientei. I explained the fight I'd watched against Reisen and Eirin, and how it had ended, including the gory details about Eirin's...Death. Ran didn't interrupt me, and after I'd finished recounting my roasting via Master Spark, she asked me some follow-up questions, then nodded in satisfaction. "Very good. This should be enough to make a report for Lady Hearn." She got to her feet. "This may not be part of my official orders, but I would like to tell you that Lady Hearn will be keeping an eye on the Eientei residents until they have proven that they can act unsupervised again." I asked her if this included the private therapy sessions I was having with Eirin, and Ran watched me impassively for a moment. "She will respect your privacy. Otherwise, Reimu would be upset." That wasn't as great of an answer as I was hoping for, but I'd take it for now.

With that conversation done and my awful attempt at asking questions put to rest, I wondered what was to happen now. "Well, Chen has yet to return, and I believe I know why. Your love is a tsuchigumo, correct?" I nodded. "I acquired a book on spiders from a bookstore in Hokkaido recently and gifted it to her as a reward. She enjoyed it. Perhaps a little too much, because it has become her new fixation." Books? "Spiders." Ah. "Indeed. Now, she's desperate to learn more, and I just sent her out to where a real spider youkai is." I could see what she was saying, so I suggested that we go and check for ourselves.

So, I stepped over to the door to Reimu's room and pulled it open. And then I stood there. And I kept standing there. And after a few moments, Ran physically moved me to the side and looked outside for herself. And then...She stood there. So there we both were. Standing and staring.

Because in front of us, on the veranda of the Hall of Worship, were Chen and Yamame, and Yamame was teaching Chen how to sew. "There, you see? You have to be careful about using too long of a thread. It'll wear out before you're finished. Oh, and make sure you sit up straight. Bad posture will cause more damage to you than Reimu ever could. Understood?" The two were sitting on the edge of the veranda, and I could see some sort of green cloth in Yamame's hands, but I couldn't quite tell what it was.

"Yes, Miss Yamame!" Chen replied happily, raising the green thing that Yamame had been holding herself. It looked like it was Chen's hat, actually. "Is it done? I think that’s all the stitches…"

"Not quite, Chen." Yamame replied, guiding Chen's hands back down. "Take a look at the inside." She flipped the hat inside-out. "See here?" She pointed at a clumped-up section of thread. "This is why we have to be careful about the thread tangling on the inside while we're working on the outside. Always make sure you're feeling the inside while you're going to prevent this."

"Oh...I think I get it." Chen said, looking down at the hat. "How, um, do we fix it? Do we have to undo the whole thing?" She sounded distinctly terrified of the possibility. “I hope not…”

Yamame shook her head. "No, we can do something clever instead." Yamame pulled a needle from her sleeve and brought it to the knotted bit of thread. "If we just..." She pulled, unwinding the thread slightly until the knot loosened. "Once the knot's loose, cut it in half and tie the ends up."

"Okay..." Chen sounded like she was concentrating very hard. I managed to tear myself away for a moment to glance at Ran, who had this little smile on her face like she was incredibly proud. "Now what?" Chen looked up at Yamame, who smiled in a way that I could read was because she was very pleased at being able to share some knowledge in a subject she knew a huge amount about.

"Now we can hide it." Yamame said with a smile. "You see that stich next to it? You can slip it underneath that. Slide the needle under the stitches...Yes, then pull through. And there you go! No one will ever know." Yamame looked up at Chen with a smile. "Well done, Chen. You’re a fast learner." She lifted the thing, which looked to be Chen’s hat, because it certainly wasn’t on her head. “I was surprised to hear that you wanted the work done on this, rather than something less visible.”

"Th-Thank you, Miss Yamame!" Chen sounded even more pleased than before. "You're so cool!" And as I knew very well - Had exploited once or twice - Yamame was extremely weak to compliments, almost as weak as she was to massages. And here, she did have the usual reaction, but I could also see that she was using everything she had to keep it together in front of Chen, probably to retain her image. “I really like spiders, so I wanted it to be on my hat!”

"O-Of course, Chen. I'm happy to help anyone who loves spiders." Yamame's voice was taking on a quality that wasn't quite like what she used to talk to Nai or her other sisters. It was almost...motherly. "But - Oh! Look, there's your master. Why don’t you go and show her your work?"

She directed Chen to turn, and she caught sight of Ran and I standing there and staring like we were trying to catch flies. Ran failed to respond. I elbowed her in the side, which felt strange to do to someone as powerful as her, but she clearly wasn't going to get moving any other way. Luckily, that seemed to reboot her, and she blinked and looked at me, then looked back at Chen, who was running toward her. "Lady Ran! Lady Ran! Look what Miss Yamame showed me how to do!" She was holding her hat out as she came to a halt in front of Ran, who managed to take it with hands that were just slightly trembling. Chen's hat had a small addition. A little web, embroidered on the front so it would sit above her right eye. "She showed me how to do it!" I cast a glance at Ran and was amazed to see that she looked like she was about to burst into tears. I tried to imagine what Hearn would do if a tiny Ran had come to her with something like this, and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't see it going at all the same way.

Finally, Ran seemed to get herself together and headed forward and over to Yamame. "Thank you for teaching my Chen, Miss Kurodani." She said, sounding remarkably more put-together than she'd looked a moment ago. "And for indulging her questions, as I imagine she had many."

"Yes, well, er, I'm used to dealing with young kids." Yamame said, looking more than a little pleased with herself. I followed the others over and Yamame caught my eye. I wanted to hug her there and then, but I managed to restrain myself. "And she was a good student. I'd love to teach her more at some point."

Chen beamed at the praise, already having taken her hat from Yamame, and put it on as if it was a priceless artifact. "I want to learn more!" Chen replied, though I suspected that she would have been happy to interrogate Yamame for hours if she could.

"Perhaps in the future, Chen." Ran told her excitable shikigami, patting her on the head. "But for now, we have work to do. Have you found Reimu?" Chen looked up, then replied that she was in the storage room and hadn't been back to the Shrine yet. "Then we'll see her there." Ran looked over at Yamame and I, then nodded once. "I'm sure that we haven't seen the last of each other today, but for now, farewell." And with that, she led Chen away before she could drag Yamame into another conversation, leaving Yamame and I stood there.

And immediately, I turned to Yamame and pulled her into yet another of my hugs. "Wh-What's this for?" She stammered, though I couldn't see her properly. Just...For being her, I said. "Oh, er...Thanks?" She hugged me back, and I barely restrained myself from holding her like that forever. Finally managing to release her, I asked her how her conversation had gone. "Well...Strange. Not bad, really, but strange. How was yours." Much of the same, I said. "Can't have been as weird as mine." She told me.

She'd be surprised, I said in response.

>>45282220
Wait does she still have her spider legs out?

>>45282532
No, she only had them out for a few seconds for Chen, then she let them disappear again
Though at this point anon would probably accept it immediately

>>45282573
Sure, but knowing that do you think Yamame would like to "try things" with them?

thanks for your efforts, writefren!

I normally am not too big on portraying Chen as "le heckin cute catgirl", but something about her interactions here is heartwarming. She's a good girl.
I hope Ran can get that break she deserves.

yukari is on the list to be fixed by anon

>>45285706
She'll gap him off a building then eat the corpse, that just what gappy youkai do.

>>45285738
if he can survive being thrown off of heaven I'm pretty sure he can survive being thrown off a building
and when yukari finds out he is alive she'll spill her spaghetti as usual and try to flirt with him

>>45285753
I'm sure being covered in spaghetti will ruin the mood for Anon, besides there are practically an endless amount of buildings gappy can throw him off of.

>>45285706
1-yukari
2-sakuya
3-orin

>>45285753
Huh anon did you forget Tenshi saved him when he fell and that pretty much started the whole plot?

>>45285888
Speaking of which we need to see Iku apologizing

>>45285888
well she still threw him at Eientei from up in the air and that was pre-peach
post-peach he'd probably just leave a big crater

>>45282220
>Yamame's voice was taking on a quality that wasn't quite like what she used to talk to Nai or her other sisters. It was almost...motherly

>>45285872
All of these are hopeless

I don't think AI anon is still here but if you are can you trying doing a Yams version of this?

>>45282220
>Ran failed to respond.

>>45282220
I like Ran slipping into delinquent mode briefly, although I'm not fond of how easily she slipped.
Yakuza Ran needs more love, but then again Ran being ex Yakuza is a recent thing, although her being from the animal realm is debatably from PCB.

>>45288128
She's kind of like Majima where she can just flip a switch

>>45288128
>not fond of how easily she slipped
I imagine Ran gets really high strung at the start of winter when Yukari's getting ready to go into hibernation (I also imagine that 'hibernation' actually just means she fucks off to the southern hemisphere like australia or new zealand where it's summer and lies around on a beach for a few months) because yukari gives her a massive list of things to do before she comes back and is just like 'okay bye have fun'
but yeah it could have taken a little more to push her into yakuza mode. I did like her mentioning toutetsu being the trigger to get her to shut up though

>>45288150
Its winter, maybe she is getting into heat. Its still the body of a fox after all.

>>45288150
might be that her annual job dump by the gap hag was comically large this year
Or maybe being a kitsune means she thinks the job of
>watch and tard wrangle this random fucking villager with a deathwish
is beneath her

>>45288416
Yukari does wish Ran was more autonomous, maybe pushing her buttons is her way of getting her to make her own decisions.

>>45282583
>do you think Yamame would like to "try things" with them?

Tenshi comes over to help fix the shrine up for winter, but where's Marisa? This is a rare time they haven't been joined at the hip.

When Reimu finally did re-emerge from the storage building with Tenshi in tow and the duo of Ran and Chen following behind, it was with a whole host of bruises, torn clothes, and ill will. "-Just saying, it's not my fault that you can't organize your own storerooms. I try to help, and this is the thanks I get? Bah, I should've just gone and bugged Marisa all day." Tenshi raised her hands, her eyes lightly shut and her general air of smugness very much present.

Reimu, who's entire vest and shirt had been torn so that it now looked as if it only went down to just above her navel, and who's sleeves had some long gashes in them to go with the bruise on her face and the cut just above her left eye, growled. "You wouldn't know what help was if it kicked you in your smug ex-celestial face." She kept having to blink because the cut wouldn't stop bleeding, and feeling quite panicked, I hopped up from the veranda and rushed over. "It's fine - Fine!" She told me in her tired-and-annoyed voice. "Forehead cuts always bleed like this. I'm fine. Stop fussing." She told me, pushing me back when I tried to get a better look.

Turning to Tenshi, I tried to inspect her, because her clothes looked to be just fine. "Oh, I'm just fine. Your poor sister couldn't hurt me if she tried."

"She's lying." Reimu muttered. "It's just under her clothes." Tenshi did look like she'd been caught out at that, but she still shrugged me off when I asked if she was okay.

"They were having a fistfight when we arrived." Ran told me, sounding quite annoyed about the whole thing. "Like children." Her eyes narrowed and she spared a glance at Chen, who didn't look like she'd taken any particular notice, and Reimu, who was glaring daggers at her. "Human children." She clarified.

"Thanks." Reimu muttered. "That makes it much better." Tenshi looked like she was doing her best to not care, but also seemed to care significantly. "If she hadn't been messing up my storeroom, it wouldn't have happened, so-"

"Moving on!" Ran raised her voice just slightly, and I saw a flicker of the same sort of annoyance she'd displayed when I'd pushed her slightly too far by asking questions. "Reimu, Lady-" She cut herself off, her eyes flickering toward me for a split second. "Lady Hearn," Reimu snorted at this, "Has, as is always the case, tasked me with assisting you with any necessary Shrine maintenance for the coming Winter." Ran's jaw seemed just slightly too clenched, and I wondered if she was more annoyed with Hearn than she was trying to let on. "If there are any pressing matters you need rectified, please inform me now."

"Pressing, but not pressing enough for her to show up herself, huh?" Reimu muttered under her breath. I was surprised to see the expression on her face. It looked like some sort of resigned disappointment. Something she expected to happen, but still made her feel a little sad every time. "She hasn't shown up for all of Summer and Autumn, too." I stepped up to Reimu without really thinking and laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked at me with a small smile, but didn't say anything. Finally, she sighed heavily. "Well...Guess we can start with the big stuff. There's some big cracks running through the storm shutters, and some bits of the veranda got hit by water damage in the last few months, so they'll need replacing. Some of the tatami mats in my rooms got damaged - just tea and stuff..." She rubbed her chin, then made a slightly annoyed noise when she aggravated one of the bruises she'd gotten. "Oh, er, Suika broke my kotatsu during a party. She keeps saying she'll replace it, but I think we all know that even if she does, it'll be at some random point years down the line, rather than when I actually need it."

"Yes, she does tend to do that sort of thing." Ran nodded, her eyes sweeping across the Shrine. "And the roof? Leaks? Breakages?"

"Some. But," And here, Reimu cheerfully slapped Tenshi on the back, who cast her eyes down at the floor and grit her teeth, "I've got someone in for that!"

"Last time I ever make a bet with you." Tenshi grumbled. "Wasn't even fair in the first place."

"Oh, don't be a sore loser. Even if you can't help it." Reimu slapped her on the back again. "If you can't win, don't play."

This time, Tenshi looked to Yamame and I. "How was I supposed to know that I'd have to deal with all the goodbyes before we could even get moving?" I cast a sideways glance at Yamame, who'd taken the opportunity at the time to kiss me within an inch of my life. She looked at me, tried and failed to hide a smirk, then shrugged. Tenshi shook her head. "So, so unfair. Poor me. However, as a celestial, I've got a reputation to maintain, so I can't renege on a bet." Reimu's mutter of 'Ex-celestial' didn't stop Tenshi's smile, but it did set her eye twitching a little.

I suddenly thought of a question, so I asked where Marisa had gotten to while all of this was going on. "Mari- Oh, she, uh, has some work she has to do, so she's not coming." That was about as enlightening as being attacked by Rumia, so I just stared at Tenshi and crossed my arms. "It's...really important work. Trust me." I said Tenshi's name sharply. "Nope, you'll get no answers from me. That routine would never work on a celestial." So, I said it again, but softly this time. And then I returned to staring, and finally, she broke. "Fine!" She huffed. "She got caught up in a turf war between the kappa and the yamawaro and...I think she's, uh, a prisoner of war. Sort of. I mean, she could probably just break out, but I think she's finding it...kind of funny. I don't know. I didn't really get it."

Reimu stared. I stared. Yamame even stared. Ran looked away, and Chen didn't really seem interested at all. Finally, Reimu turned in the direction of the Shrine and began walking away. "That is probably the weirdest response you could have given, seriously. What the hell does that even mean? She's a prisoner of war? No - You know what? I don't even want to know. I'll just make fun of her the next time she's here." Reimu reached the veranda outside her room and hopped up, then stepped inside and shut the door behind her, leaving the rest of us to stand around staring at each other.

"Well, shall we get to work?" Ran pointedly asked. "Chen?"

"Huh? Oh, er, yes, Lady Ran." Chen had been holding a box the whole time, which she offered to Tenshi now. "Here are your tools, Miss Celestial."

"Ex-celestial." Ran said automatically, as if she hadn't even realised that she was doing it.

"Oh, um, Miss ex-celestial." Chen corrected herself consciously. Tenshi stared at her with narrowed eyes, and I thought for a second I was about to have another fight on my hands, so I said her name in that Yamame-like tone, and she looked over at me and stuck her tongue out, then snatched the box and stomped off in the direction of the Shrine.

"Chen," Ran began, "Please go and ask Reimu if there's any work that you can do. I'll deal with the larger items."

Chen nodded seriously. "Understood, Lady Ran!" She turned and took off toward the Shrine, and I wondered if that would just lead to Reimu shouting at her. I hoped not. Still, that left Yamame, Ran and myself, and Yamame looked a little restless.

"I'm going to ask Miss Tenshi if she needs any help." Yamame declared as she turned to me. "Construction is...Well, my wheelhouse, really. I'm just wasted sitting around here when there's work that I could be doing - That I know how to do, no less. Don't worry, I'll only gossip about you a little bit." Yamame watched my mouth go up and down without any real noise coming out, then giggled. "You really are just too adorable." She told me." I couldn't really argue with that, though I wasn't sure what I would be doing if Yamame was off fixing the roof. "You're asking me that?" Yamame blankly looked at me. "I, er..." Finally, she seemed to come to a conclusion, and leaned in closer. "I think your sister could use some cheering up." She did? "Oh, yes. "When you have as many sister as I do, you get used to picking up on the nuances in their moods." With that, Yamame pulled me down for a kiss, which was very nice, then took off in a jog toward the Shrine, calling out to Tenshi.

Which, finally, left Ran and I alone again. Ran, it seemed, still didn't feel like she'd cleared the air properly, because she spoke up first. "I need to apologize." I glanced over at her with a furrowed brow. She already had, hadn't she? "Yes, but - An apology is meaningless if you don't understand why it is necessary." I frowned, saying that I'd thought that revealing further details were against Ran's orders. "Some, but not all. I told you, for example, that Lady Hearn is busy with preparations for her hibernation in Winter, but I didn't tell you exactly what her preparations consisted of." Was she going to? "Not in detail, no, but I will explain in brief. Each year, at the beginning of Winter, Lady Hearn begins to compile a list. This list is a series of tasks that must be carried out before the beginning of Spring. I, and Chen by extension, are the beneficiaries of this list. The burden of running Gensokyo remains on my shoulders until Lady Hearn returns." I slowly nodded, but I didn't particularly understand it. "The list has grown...More complex, as time has gone by. I tell you this only so you will understand that I am under a great deal of stress. And then, I was informed by Lady Hearn that I was to come and obtain a report on the Eientei Investigation from you, when I am already busy enough."

I supposed I could understand that. I'd definitely felt like I was a bit overwhelmed with things I needed to do before, and I knew how exhausting it could feel. Then, Ran looked away. "There's - Another reason. It's nearly Winter, and I'll..." She trailed off, then shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. That's not your business and I shouldn't be talking about it. Just forgot I said anything." I decided not to try and push her this time, especially after her previous outburst. Instead, I told her that I still accepted her apology and I was just glad that she was here at all. "Yes. Well, it's for Reimu's benefit too." Ran's reply was somewhat stiff. "I'd best get to work." She said, slipping her hands back into the opposite sleeve and stepping past me. "I fear I do not understand why Lady Hearn is so interested in you." She told me as she passed, "However, she seems to approve of your relationship with Reimu, and I believe that she would like you to continue staying close to her." I turned to ask her just what she had meant by that, but she was already passing me by and heading off through one of her gaps in reality. I could see the corresponding gap where she would emerge before she even stepped into it, which made me wonder what the point was beside showing off.

Now finally on my own, I decided to follow Yamame's advice and headed for Reimu's room, wondering if Reimu was really doing as poorly as I dreaded. As I got there, Chen walked out. "Oh!" She seemed a little startled at practically running into me. "Oh, um, sorry, Miss Yamame's human. Reimu told me to begin repairing the veranda damage." She nodded as she spoke, and I told her to take care. "I will! I'm good at avoiding danger! And I've done this before." She looked very proud of herself, so I told her to get going while I went to speak with Reimu. Chen gave me a serious nod, then set about examining some damage I'd seen to the veranda closer to the second room of the Shrine's living quarters. I, meanwhile, stepped into Reimu's rooms and slid the door behind me shut.

Reimu was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her legs were underneath the table, and she'd grabbed my coat from outside on her way in and laid it over herself. She tilted her head just slightly to look over at me, then looked back at the ceiling. "Hi." Was all she said. I slowly came over and sat down next to her, then pulled my coat up slightly more so that it came up to her chin. With its length, it still easily covered her whole body. I asked her if she was cold. "A bit. Your coat is warmer than my futon."

Ran could probably get her a new one, I said. She seemed happy enough to do whatever Reimu needed her to do. "Yeah, I guess. I could probably get her to give me something better, but it's just...It feels like pity. I know, I know. I live off of donations - what little there are - and everything, but every Winter, Ran shows up and does all this, and it just reminds me that there's not really anyone else." Anyone else? "Yeah, like...I've got friends, I guess, but most of them are youkai and the few humans are too busy with their own things. I haven't seen Kosuzu - The, uh, clerk from Suzunaan, if you didn't know - for...I'm not sure. Years? Maybe. Even Marisa hasn't shown up here lately." I was feeling a little worried about Reimu now, so I decided that the best thing to do would be to join her until she felt better. So, I stood, dragged out the futon's blanket, despite Reimu's earlier words about it being not all that warm, and dropped it on top of her. "Wh-Oof!" She grunted as it landed on her, and I crouched down to unfurl the blanket properly. In the end, I decided to just leave it running over the top of the table, and then I joined Reimu underneath both the blanket and my coat. "What are you doing?" She asked me as if I was crazy.

I grabbed hold of her hand and squeezed. She wasn't alone, and there was someone else. I was here for her and I always would be. I considered her family. That meant something to me. And it wasn't just me. Yamame was warming up to Reimu considerably after the time we had spent together at Lady Kasen's dojo, and I was certain that Marisa still cared plenty about Reimu, and now Tenshi was becoming less like an antagonistic force and more like a frustrating friend. "Well - Um, okay." Reimu mumbled. "I consider you family too." She continued, finally turning her head to face me. Reimu had mentioned some of her childhood to me before, and it had mostly consisted of her being alone, at least until Incidents had really started to become a thing and she'd been up to her ears in youkai coming to visit the Shrine. "Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself. Winter blues or something." She turned her gaze back to the ceiling, so I sighed and joined her. "Everyone seems to have someone." She said listlessly.

That didn't mean that we didn't have each other. I squeezed her hand tighter. "I thought it was fine, you know? But now it seems like no one comes to visit. And even if they do, it's just to bug me. Not to talk." I thought about it and something came to mind. I asked Reimu if Lady Kasen had been by lately. "Ha. No. Not since she managed to start redeeming her arm. How were the Hot Springs, by the way?" I took the spark of interest as a good time and decided to give Reimu a rundown of the events that had occurred in the Hot Springs Town. But, when I reached the part where I'd finally said to Yamame that I loved her, Reimu grew quiet again. "Finally said it?" She asked me, and I nodded with a fond smile. "I figured it was going to happen eventually. Even back when I, er, barged in on the two of you." Despite it, her words didn't sound too happy. They sounded a little wistful. I loved Reimu too, I said. I really, honestly did. It hurt to see her sad and I wanted to try and fix it. Reimu sighed and rolled onto her side to look at me properly. "I'm not sad." She insisted. "I'm just...I don't know." I didn't know either, but I did know that I didn't want to leave her alone.

I pulled her into a weird sort of hug because we were both lying on the floor, but I think she appreciated it. At least, I hoped that she did. "Are you going to stay here all day?" She asked me, and I nodded. All night too, if I had to. Yamame would understand. She knew family better than anyone. She'd probably offer to stay too, for that matter. And then, I heard a rustling sound above me and looked back up to the ceiling.

Just in time to see a chunk of it pulled away, and Tenshi's face staring back down at me. "What are you doing down there?" She asked with a frown. "Why are you in bed?"

"What are we doing?" Reimu repeated. "What are you doing? Put my roof back!" I heard some noise, and Tenshi pulled back out of sight, only for Yamame's head to fill the space. "What the hell is going on up there?" Reimu asked with more than a little exasperation. "Do I have to come up there?"

"Well, uh, there was a big crack running through this bit of wood." Yamame explained. "It lets moisture in, and over time, it'll rot. Luckily, it's only this one bit, so we can just replace it." She leaned back for a moment, then pulled something out that I couldn't see. "It'll be fine. Trust me."

"More than I trust Tenshi, anyway..." Reimu muttered under her breath. I flicked her in the side. "She rebuilt the Shrine before, you know. Stuck a keystone in the foundations and it had to be torn down again. I'd rather not have a repeat." Like I'd said, Tenshi was undergoing a transformation of her own and becoming more reliable and trustworthy, or at least, so I thought. "Yeah, well...Doesn't mean I have to be nice to her. Yet." She only added the last bit on because I'd looked like I was about to give her a lecture.

It did turn out to be fine, and it was only a few minutes later that the hole in the roof had disappeared. A few minutes after that, Yamame and Tenshi appeared, pushing open the door to Reimu's room. "Oh, you two really are just...laying there." Tenshi said.

"Yeah, thanks for telling me. I wasn't sure." Reimu muttered. I looked over at Yamame, who looked back at me with a look that asked if I wanted her to stay, and I nodded slightly. So, Yamame immediately got down on Reimu's other side. "What - Huh?" The grumpy Shrine Maiden asked with some annoyance. "Did he put you up to this?" She asked Yamame.

"No, but I know a thing or two about families." Yamame told her gently. "Sometimes, you just need someone there."

"So, er, I'm just going to..." Tenshi began, but I cut her off and told her to get over here too. "What?" Tenshi sounded confused, and I assured her that she had heard me. "But I - I don't-" I said her name in that tone that I was really starting to enjoy using. "...Oh, fine. Just for a bit." And she kicked off her boots at the door and joined us.

"So, uh, how does this help?" Reimu asked slowly.

"I've never seen a hug that didn't help." Yamame told her, and together, we both wrapped our arms around Reimu. After a moment, I felt Tenshi hesitantly join in, and I was happy to find that yes, it did help. I wasn't feeling particularly bad like Reimu, but still, hugs were nice. So, I decided that that was the best way to help Reimu.

Give her lots of hugs.

>>45291630
>"There's - Another reason. It's nearly Winter, and I'll..."
SIX
WHOLE
WEEKS

>>45291736
Ah, the fight with Yamns as Ran goes baby crazy will be amusing if Yukari sends her off to interview him again

>>45291627
Ah, the good ol' turtle racism.

>>45291627
You can't just casually drop that Marisa is a PoW in a war between the kappa and the yamawaro
That's like...a whole story's worth of content on its own

>>45292099
Being so understated is what makes it funny

>>45292099
Just think of it as a splatoon campaign

reimoo...

Haven't been keeping up with these threads for a while... Is everything still going well?

>>45292099
That's just Gensokyo anon, better get used to it.

>>45292244
No. I had a stomach ache last night after i ate some cheap street food and was shitting water the entire day today.

>>45292278
damn, sorry for using expired rat poison on your food. Hard times man, getting good ingredients is tough :(

>>45292244
We are far past the worst part at this point

>>45292336
Worst part of what?

>>45292342
ur mum

>>45292244
The prologue is almost done, soon we'll finally start the first chapter of Yamames new book on how to raise children.

i was going to say something but i forgot

>>45292386
>>45292386
so the main arc:
Yamama child raising arc
Reimu's boyfriend arc
Marilonely arc(will never get a boyfriend arc)
Ran's heat arc
Fused Ibaraki arc(she almost crashes the wedding by tearing it down in a fit of tears)
Anon goes to hell(vacation to new hell)
Yukari jobs
Alice builds a husband
Eirin treats the Hourai elixir(but never gives it to Mokou)
Anon learns to fly
Patchy and Anon start a book club(everything goes wrong)
Remi brags about the vampire incident (seh gets utterly anally devastated by Reimu after making him cry)
The CUBE
Chen knits her first outfit for Ran
Satori unlocks the other memories of Anon
Koishi happens
Reverse DDC featuring Yammy
Meiling and Anon find Orange
Waggy and Kaggy get Banki hitched(to a nice hunter in the village)
Keine discovers how many spoods went without formal education
Akyuu goes to the gym
Mokou and the inaba of the earth go on a quest
Great Fairy Wars 2
Kanako appears and vanishes in the same paragraph, never to appear again
Tony Hawk's proskater: Genoskyo edition
Aya follows through on her threat
Yukari loses her glasses

And much much more!

>>45292915
seeing it like this I'm starting to get concerned that this story is never going to end

>>45294327
I'm sure it'll wrap up after Tony Hawk's proskater: Genoskyo edition. Seems like a good place to do it.

Oh, cool. This thread fit into a single image without quality loss.
On an unrelated note, here is a yakuza/Dwayne Johnson looking Ran I found.

>>45294783
discussion picked up a bit after the last two or so threads so there were less updates posted overall

Next thread:
>>45294792

>>45292915
>Kanako appears and vanishes in the same paragraph, never to appear again
nooo...