[X] Nightwish’s Wish I Had An Angel. (Flandre loved it)


Once more they were in the Library. The matter of Youkai Mountain was not discussed.

Although Gen would eye his Master suspiciously on some occasions when her eyes were put elsewhere, he did not ask if she had spoken to him within a dream and he did not bring up the unacceptable present state of his quest. He still had more than a week to accomplish it, so kvetching now was not needed—even if he had kvetched while in the World of Dreams.

To be frank: he did not wish to even be in the same space as his Master until he was absolutely certain he was on the right track. Presenting himself before her as “together” and “not a bumbling fool” was very important to him.

“You look as if something is concerning you.”

[ ♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UFI0dms5LM ]
[Specialist - Persona 4 (Meguro Shoji)]

“Hm!?” He grunted this with a fool-smile on, lifting his cheek from his fist and blinking (he had been slouching over a table). Patchouli had struck the nail precisely on its head. He pretended as if she hadn’t, and replied, “No?”

“Gen is upset that I found what he couldn’t,” said Sakuya, who was almost sitting on the same tables at which he was resting. She pointed at the adapter, which she’d told Patchouli she had found in Muenzuka while Gen had failed at Kourindou. “And though it was only a flip of a coin which of us, if not either, would find success. Isn’t he precious? He is that desperate for your favor, Lady Patchouli.”

It was a lie they hadn’t agreed on, but Gen appreciated how quickly Sakuya had come up with it.

“Well, precious or not he should get rid of that foul mood. His bothered face is just a bother to me,” said Patchouli. She then turned to look at who was sat on the couch beside her. In the meanwhile, Sakuya looked Gen’s way and gave the miserable-looking apprentice an apologetic shrug and smile.

The one seated next to Patchouli Knowledge was Flandre Scarlet, wearing an old, brown, pair of studio-work headphones and bouncing joyfully in her seat.

She sang “I’m in love with my lust, burning angel wings to dust!”; evidently her favorite lyric of the song she had listened to several times now.

The iPod was functional. It had come with six songs, though oddly they seemed to be nothing akin to the kinds of sample music Gen thought one would typically find on a fresh device, though the number of songs to sample was about the usual. In any case the tastes of whomever had added the songs were... eclectic. There had been a heartfelt pop song from America, another with R&B stylings from Japan, a famous “noise”-y and frightening song by Aphex Twin, a song from a Japanese band he hadn’t heard of that blended pop and hip hop in a way he found delightful, and there was the song Flandre was listening to: a song from the band called Nightwish. He only knew a bit of them, but apparently their bombastic, “epic”-styled rock operatic and orchestral flavor struck just the right chord with his younger Mistress.

Moments before his Master had caught him staring worriedly at her, she, he, Sakuya, Flandre, and Meiling (who was no longer present) had been discussing the songs and which they thought the master of the house, Remilia Scarlet, would enjoy listening to first... or rather, which they would each like their Mistress to listen to first. Meiling had liked the foreign pop song, his Master had liked the pop/R&B song from Japan. He and Flandre had their favorites, but the only person who didn’t seem to favor any song in particular had been Sakuya. Sakuya wanted her Mistress to listen to Aphex Twin. Her wicked intentions were worn plain on her sleeve.

It was Gen who was allowed to ultimately decide, and seeing as his younger Mistress was so fond of Nightwish, he was leaning toward leading with that for Remilia.

“Ahh, it’s great...!” Flandre sounded exhausted as she pulled the headphones down from her ears to around her neck. She looked content: eyes closed and a single fang protruding from her smiling lips. She opened her eyes to look at the iPod’s screen as she navigated the short song list with its circular pad. “I like Aphex Twin’s song, too!” she declared.

“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” agreed Sakuya, beaming with a serpentine lean. Patchouli and Gen looked at the made with evident exasperation.

“Let’s have Remi listen to the songs when night falls,” said Patchouli, calling a book from a shelf and settling down as Flandre hit “play” on Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy. Soon the youngest vampire’s head was lightly bopping, and the two magicians were side-eyeing her uncomfortably.

Night won’t fall for a while, thought Gen. I’d better have something else to do.

He glanced at Sakuya.

Hm.

He wanted to use magic to create or summon a “self-warming cloth”. He also didn’t want his Master to realize that that was his intention. As she’d already caught him looking into gods and artifacts, she would know that that avenue which he had been looking into only just that earlier morning had already proved a dead end. Then, she would question him about that. And, he would have to answer.

That thus returned to point one. Shielding his pride was paramount, and still very much doable.

He was thinking...


[] getting Sakuya to help would likely be a safe bet. She could easily get him books with Patchouli being none the wiser.

[] Sakuya was a bit too much of a wild card to truly “rely” on—or rather, she perhaps wouldn’t be keen on him “pushing his luck”, as it were. The fairy maids, however, were straightforward and simple. They, though wild and stupid and frank, could actually potentially assist him best.

[] researching within the library, or using the library’s resources, was just too much of a risk. No... instead he’d pay the sleeping Marisa a visit, and he would convince her to help instead. A Founding Father of America once said something to the effect, “an enemy that has done you a favor—a kindness, will be only more ready to do for you another”.

image source: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2593687

++++++++

[X] Sakuya was a bit too much of a wild card to truly “rely” on—or rather, she perhaps wouldn’t be keen on him “pushing his luck”, as it were. The fairy maids, however, were straightforward and simple. They, though wild and stupid and frank, could actually potentially assist him best.


I’ll go and rally them— he decided, no gifts, otherwise they’ll talk about it.

Alright, it’s settled.

He looked up from the table, the surface of which he had been gazing into while planning. His gaze was met with Sakuya’s, and the maid kindly asked, “Is something the matter?”

“I’m planning another coup,” he replied.

Her brow raised. “Ohh...” she breathed. “Be less troublesome about it this time, hm?”

He smiled and told her, “I will!”

“I hope you’re just joking, Gen. I will have no chaos on a day we give Remi a gift,” said his Master, staring at him from afar.

“No chaos,” he swore, hand raised.

“Not an ounce of it,” she demanded, and he nodded, standing from his chair.

“I’ll be back by dinner time,” he announced.

“Stay safe.”

“Fare well, Gen.”

“It’s au-tomaaatic~!” sang Flandre.

He swiveled on the toe of his shoe and exited the space, and eventually the library.

~~

According to a few maids he stopped, today a number of fairies were relaxing in one of Remilia’s studies on the first floor, pretending to be refined. He made his way, opened the door to that study, and interrupted them.

“Are there any fairies in here?” he asked.

[ ♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FD4bSgQXT0 ]
[Afternoon Break - Persona 3 (Meguro Shoji)]

“Why, yes, Master Itou, there are seven fairies in the room,” declared one of the seven, seated in a scarlet armchair with a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar open atop her lap. This fairy was named Parchment, and this was not the first time she’d acted this way.

“... Where did you get a monocle?” he asked, his shoulders slumping as he closed the door behind himself.

“Hmhmhm... Ahahahahaha!! I am very glad you asked!” she chuckled, laughed, and gave an enthusiastic shout.

“‘Where did you get it?’—Ohohoho! ‘Where’, asks the human!” said another fairy in a separate couch.

“One may as well ask how glass is made!” said another with a scoff.

“And everybody knows how glass is made,” bragged one sitting on a bookshelf.

“Glass is made in ovens!” declared one sat a few feet away from him on the floor, reading a different children’s book before her.

“Yes, like cakes,” affirmed one who was sitting on the floor to the left of the doorway and fiddling with an armillary sphere. She closed her eyes and wagged her finger at the human in front of the door, as if chastising him.

“Heh heh...” chuckled the last, sipping tea at a small table to his right. Smiling, she looked into her cup and queried, “... Wasn’t if furnaces?”

“Furniture?”

“Couches?”

“Cakes?”

“I’d much rather talk about cakes.”

“We should have some cake.”

“Yes! Gen, have you brought cake?”

“I haven’t brought any cake.”

“Then why are you here!?” yelled Parchment, to a following chorus of “Yeah!” from the rest.

This yellow-haired fae was outraged, her tiny fist slammed onto a page of mainly sweets through which the titular Caterpillar ate through in the story.

“Did you all find a radio or something?” Does radio even make it through the barrier? “Why are you all talking like that?” asked Gen, his face twisted in consternation.

“We are being like the Mistress you prolotratertaetrite.”

“I—what?” he asked, slouching now.

“Prostarious!”

“Prototototatry-ish!”

“Prosit!”

“It was proletariat,” said the faint blue-haired, tea-sipping fairy. Her name was Coffee Sugar.

“Coffee, why are you with Parchment?” Gen posed the question, looking directly at her. This was a rarer sort of fairy, and he most often saw her on her lonesome if ever—or with Mistress Remilia. She was a fairy who tended to prefer solitary pursuits.

“Parch stole a sugar cube and gave it to me,” she explained. Parchment swiveled her head quick and became panicked.

“Oh my god!” the blond cried. “Shut up!”

“What?” asked Coffee, genuinely confused.

Parchment quickly looked to him and begged, “Gen, please don’t tell Miss Sakuya!” Her hands were now gripping both the armrests at her sides. At the mention of their boss’s name, the rest of the maids sans-Coffee seemed to grow concerned as well.

Gen blinked. “... You wanted Coffee to teach you how to be refined?” he posited.

At once, the fairies aside from Coffee became red-faced and ashamed, hiding their glowing cheeks in their hands.

He began to grin. “Forget telling Miss Sakuya,” he said, “I have to tell the Mistress about this.”

“Don’t! That’s so embarrassing!” screamed Parchment.

“It’s mortifying!”

“It’s horrible!”

“Oh, what a world!”

“I’m melting!”

“Quiet,” he hissed. Coffee indicated that she wanted his attention, beckoning it with her hand. He looked at her quizzically.

“Gen, can you make sugar cubes with magic...!?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.

“No,” he said flatly, and she flinched, now looking just as mortified as the others in the room.

“Th-Then... getting me more sugar—”

“I’m not even allowed in the pantry, you know?” he answered.

“Oh no...” moaned Coffee, her free hand raised and wavering. She whispered, “I’m melting...”

“OH, WHAT A WORLD!” cried the fairy on the floor before him.

“Oh, Jesus,” he grumbled. This was becoming a chain reaction. “I won’t tell anyone!” he snapped. They all lifted their heads and looked at him with burgeoning hope—except Coffee, who was still horribly upset. Ignoring that, he informed them, “Rather, I came to you on business.”

“Eh? Work?” asked the fairy on the bookshelf.

“You all have jobs, don’t you?” he reminded them, his voice tired.

The one at his left straightened her back. From her place on the floor she looked at him sternly and asked, “You’re gonna order us, then? On whose authority?”

“Oh god...”

“Our orders come direct from the masters of the house and you, Sir Gen, are an apprentice,” the fairy argued.

Her name was May Truce. Like Coffee she wasn’t... without intelligence. She kept her hair short and proper, and she wore large spectacles not out of necessity, but as a statement. She adjusted those glasses now, their lenses catching the lamplight from the walls of the room.

“Parchment called me ‘Master’ Itou earlier,” he noted.

“That was a different ‘master’,” the fairy clarified, holding her hands in front of her as if she were holding the word itself. She moved her hands to her right side and said, “Not master, but master.”

Her distinction was clear enough in Japanese and, to Gen, absolutely irritating.

“Do I really have to argue with you, Miss Truce?” he questioned.

“It’s ‘Mistress Truce’ to you, preposterate!” said May with an emphatic point at his face.

“Proletariat...” Coffee corrected, still nearly weeping.

“Proletariat Gen!!” May shouted.

“Working class Gen!” Parchment followed with zeal, having found her strength again.

“Peasant!”

“Commoner!”

“Bourgeois Gen!”

“Gentry Gen!”

“That’s not right...” Coffee moaned off to the side. Gen put one hand on his hip and the other to his chin, frowning.

Alright, fine... he thought, what’s the next move?


[] Remind them you’ve led them before.

[] Lie about it, say you’re bringing orders from someone else.

[] Attempt to redirect their focus again,
----[] now on the subject of sugar cube magic.
----[] now on the armillary sphere.
----[] back on Parchment’s monocle.

++++++++

Note: Gen lied and he absolutely can make sugar cubes with magic, or at least he can if he looks into it. Marisa makes candy stars after all.

image source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/77076064

++++++++

[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzdgIYzoZUY ]
[Lindblum - Final Fantasy IX OST (Uematsu Nobuo)]

[X] Remind them you’ve led them before.


Gen took a leader’s posture – one of confidence and sureness – in an instant. Seeing this, the rest straightened their postures as well—even Coffee, who had been crying (and was now sniffling).

So, he spoke, querying: “Who was it who commanded you lot not three days ago through the forests of Gensokyo, seeking treasures?”

“It was Sir Gen,” answered Parchment.

“And not long before that? The one who led Livy, Shimmer, Panora, and Lev in the investigation behind who was drawing humans and youkai to The Shrine?”

“That was Gen...” answered Coffee.

“And you should know:” began the Apprentice, looking down at May beside him with a cool, presidential façade, “who it was just last year who instigated and directed the rebellion against the rest of the Mansion—the one who you all followed into battle against Sakuya?”

“You, Gen,” the little maid replied.

“I am the second-in-command of the fairy maid contingent in Scarlet Devil Mansion!” he declared to the rest of the room, standing at-ease and keeping his chin up. “Stand!”

They all did so, taking the proper maidly postures which Sakuya had taught them: spines straight, heads held high, and hands placed neatly before their aprons.

He looked them over then, and said, “I have something for you lot to do.”

~~

The idea was only to get them to act. He ordered this task force of fae to find him three categories of things from the library: books on fairy lifestyle, books on enchantment, and books on sealing. The books about their race were meant as a distraction—of which he would have liked one or two other categories to rest assured, but... three categories, all, was a safe number for the unintelligent pseudo children of the Mansion to likely keep in mind.

While they gathered, he walked through the mansion’s halls. He had time before evening and more time before they would be done. He wondered how he might spend it?


[] By returning to the library in a bold showing that the one responsible for the fairies’ taking of books could not possibly be him. Also, to see his Master, younger Mistress, and his colleague Sakuya.

[] By going to see Miss Meiling. They hadn’t had too much time together of late, aside from during tai chi practice.

[] By going to see Wakasagihime. He could always make time for the Princess.

[X] By going to see Miss Meiling. They hadn’t had too much time together of late, aside from during tai chi practice.


~~

A whistle carried on the wind.

At the gates of Scarlet Devil Mansion, its red-haired guard was dutifully keeping watch—standing at ease and passing the time with a tune. Not one in particular: a nonsense melody, for the hell of it. There was very little to do most days in Gensokyo as the Vampire’s gatekeeper. Few ever dared even near the mansion, and trespass? They only ever had one who tried to do that—and it was very rare that she ever tried going through the front. If she ever did, it meant the guard was sleeping on the job, and that really did not happen. Often.

Evening was soon. Ahead, Misty Look tended to not look particularly nice in twilight, she thought. Perhaps she had just already become accustomed to this sight in the time since they’d moved to the land of fantasy. It changed little—looked best in the winter, never pleasant at noon. And while youkai and humans frequented the lake every day, that the fear of the Devil kept so many away meant that watching people fish, frolic, and whatnot was always very distant. She needed manga. She needed something to distract from the drudgery.

She was glad she was also a gardener.

“Don’t nap,” said a male voice. Meiling looked up at the source. He didn’t always sit up there... In fact he’d only done so once before: when they’d first properly met. She stopped looking at the Mansion’s second human, and kept watch ahead instead.

“I won’t nap,” she answered tersely.

“Master Patchouli keeps saying you do. Often,” he countered lightly. Out her periphery, she saw him casually swinging his feet.

“I don’t!” she snapped in return, shutting her eyes with annoyance.

“Well, assuming you do,” he ignored her, “I couldn’t blame you. How often does anyone even come to the gate, Miss Meiling?”

She partly glanced his way and explained, “Not very. We’re almost a hermit estate, like this.”

“So you’re a guard for show? Like the fairy maids are just here to staff the halls?” asked the boy. Meiling flinched.

“Sir Gen!” she addressed him in something akin to a hiss. “You’re not supposed to say that!”

“Ahh... sorry,” Gen apologized honestly. His Mistress Remilia’s love of “veneer” was a mansion open secret—acknowledged, known, but never, ever bluntly addressed: especially outside its gates. This unspoken rule was one he’d gathered early, in fact...

With rosy cheeks the guard also added, “And I’m not for show...! Gensokyo is just peaceful! ... And I’ve had to guard the gate before, you know!”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again.

“Sometimes I stop Miss Marisa...!” Meiling went on. “And there are youkai and fairies on occasion, thinking they can get past me!”

And the apprentice replied, “Didn’t you let a lot of people through during the last week? When the Incident was happening... Master said the gate had become a revolving door.”

“I-It wasn’t that many!” insisted the guard, now looking at him completely. Gen was slouching and had his hands locked together in front of his knees. Meiling thus told him: “Sit up straight!”

“Right.” He did, separating his hands and putting them on his knees instead.

“So did you only come here to bother me, Sir Gen?” asked the guard, returning to her watch once again.

“‘Bother’...” the young man repeated. “At the least, I wanted to chat with you.”

“I see... Well, I appreciate that,” she told him honestly.

“I was thinking of maybe getting you something to make guarding less dull, but... you have to give your complete attention for as long as you can, right?”

She nodded.

“Who guards when you go to sleep?” asked Gen.

“The fairies that I’m in charge of,” answered Meiling, turning her chin a bit as she gave him attention, “the night guard: fairies of the moon, the stars, shadow. You haven’t seen them since you always go to bed long before I do, Sir Gen. Mistress Remilia thinks it’s fine to have them keep watch while she is awake and at her best.”

“She’s only sometimes awake at night, though,” said Gen. Meiling smiled with apology and amusement.

“That’s on our Mistress,” she said. “Things have gotten very strange since we arrived in Gensokyo...”

“Right, the Mansion was moved here. Were things different where you were before?”

“Of course,” answered Meiling with a decisive nod. Memories of the night—of hunters and holy men at the walls—flashed through her mind. “I actually had real work to do,” she said.

The flash showed in her eyes, which had faded a second. The nearby human saw this, and considered it.

“Mistress Remilia... is over five hundred years old?” asked Gen, adding “Mistress Flandre has said she’s a bit younger than her, and Mistress Flandre has been alive for over five centuries.”

“That’s right,” the gatekeeper confirmed with a lighter nod than before.

“Did you all live in the same place for five hundred years?”

Wearing an apologetic smile again, Meiling said, “You’ll have to ask Mistress Remilia about that, and I’m not sure that she’ll answer.”

Gen thought, Because the past is behind, I suppose... She doesn’t bring up anything of her old exploits or life. Maybe I shouldn’t ask.

Not her, that is.

His Master would most definitely be more willing to talk, not that she had been alive anywhere near as long as his Mistress. She’d studied in her library for the last hundred years, and he was sure she was older than just one century... Almost two, he thought. But five? That was certainly not it.

“Anyway, Sir Gen: I haven’t gotten to ask—” Meiling began to pose a question, and the boy perked up, “—What were you hiding in your clothes last night? It was something alive, right!?”

He flinched, went pale, and began to sweat. Bringing his hands together once more, Gen’s thumbs did fretting combat as he tried to pretend he hadn’t heard the question.

“Come oooon... Tell me, Sir Gen!” Meiling whined.

“U-huh...” he stammered awkwardly, and Meiling started to slyly grin. She’d realized something.

“Wait... you like little girls so... were you smuggling one—!? Aha! Ahaha! No way, right!” Meiling laughed.

Gen was not laughing.

While the worry over his being a lolicon was sincerely unwarranted in Gensokyo, where so many could not have their ages accurately determined by appearance, the fact was still the fact:

He’d denied it once, but he really did like little girls. In fact, he had discovered very recently that he liked them quite a bit.

He had to answer; Meiling would stop tittering soon and construe his silence badly. He thought, should he tell the truth? Lie? He felt he could trust Sakuya but Meiling was a bit... sloppy.

He felt like she and he were siblings, all told, but sisters and brothers let secrets slip all the time... or so he’d gathered. He was still an only child.

He wanted to trust Meiling, but he was not certain that he should. She would mock the truth, most definitely... He ran through many scenarios in his head: quickly, worriedly.

And he decided—


[] He would wholeheartedly tell her the truth.

[] He would sincerely request that she not spread the truth, and then sincerely tell it.

[] He most definitely wouldn’t tell her the truth, not now.

>.gif

Choice comes up before the end of the update. Also, it will be open during the NEXT update, as I'll get to that ideally tomorrow (today).

++++++++

[X] He would wholeheartedly tell her the truth.


[♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=8FJTKM772g4 ]
[Key-word - TOHO JAZZY VOCAL I (Swing Of The Dead)]

“Your wording is a bit wrong, but...” started Gen, nervously, and Meiling’s laughter began to halt. She looked at him with one eye closed while clutching her stomach. He continued, saying, “I didn’t want Master Patchouli to know about it, so I was being secretive.”

“Eh... Eh? You didn’t want her to know? So it’s not like last time when you were hiding something from everyone in the mansion?” asked Meiling. He nodded.

“I’ve already told Sakuya,” he admitted. “I’ll tell you too, Miss Meiling.”

“Oh!? You will!?” After she said this, Gen winced. It almost seemed like the youkai was glowing: her eyes had widened in surprise and an anticipating smile was opened on her face. He swallowed, and finally admitted:

“I was hiding an oni in my clothes last night,” he said, solemn and red-faced. “Ibuki Suika. I’ve entered courtship with the oni who showed herself a few days ago.”

Meiling took a moment to process this.

After this moment, her brow entirely distorted, and she shouted, “You WHAT!?”

“Ibuki Suika,” he repeated. “I’ve started dating her.”

“The—! Ah! The oni who escaped the mansion that day after the last gathering!? Seriously!?” cried the guard.

Gen nodded, saying, “Yeah.”

“Dating, then—” Meiling stopped herself to recall what she’d seen the previous night. In a few seconds the recollection was accessed and closely examined, and the sitting apprentice watched as his youkai friend’s creeping realization showed in her eyes. Soon enough, she determined: “Then it was perverted!”

“‘Per—’!? You mean when she—?” Gen sputtered with surprised, and thought of how the oni had begun caressing his back while clinging to him. “I... I’d prefer to think of that as affection,” he firmly insisted.

“Really...? It just seemed... lewd,” asserted the guard. At the last word, Gen shivered. “And, you showed up in the dark hours of the morning...” Meiling went on. “You didn’t sleep with her?” she asked.

“Well, I... I did, but...” Gen stammered, and Meiling was left in awe. “At the time, I wasn’t... there weren’t any... plans like that. When she rubbed my back it was because... she... needed to...”

He was slouching, and deeply embarrassed.

“Don’t make me talk about this!” he snapped, looking to Meiling with an expression of blended enmity and pleading.

“I haven’t made you say anything, Sir Gen!” she countered. She stood straight after having twisted and turned to shoot looks his way and, while still looking at him, told him succinctly: “Well, I’ll keep what you’ve told me a secret, though. I think you’re right: Lady Patchouli wouldn’t approve of your relationship.”

“Miss Meiling...” said Gen in quiet surprise. His bitter visage was wiped away at once and replaced with burgeoning warmth.

“Moreover,” continued Meiling, but before she said more a catlike smirk crept onto her lips. For a moment, worry washed over him again. The guard shut her eyes, grinned with glee, and declared, “I very much do approve! Oh wow, Gen! You fell in love!”

“Uh,” uttered Gen. And again, “Uh.”

“It has to be real if you fell for each other so fast!” jabbered his friend. “You’ve met so many people since you arrived, and you’re quite outgoing, so I figured you’d have met a girl you fancied much sooner than that!”

I... did, actually, thought Gen as he stared, unflinching and with furrowed brow, at Meiling. Though I never tried nor wished to try pursuing it before, suppose...

A thought occurred to him. He asked, “Hey, Meiling... didn’t you call me out for liking little girls when we first met? And just a few minutes ago... You know Ibuki Suika looks like a child, right?”

“Yeah,” said Meiling with a nod, “and?” she asked.

“... It doesn’t... bother you, or...?” he ventured while leaning forward, confused.

“Ehh? Why would it? I don’t understand.” Was Meiling’s response.

“... Then why’d you say that!? Why’d you laugh!?” he demanded to know.

“‘Why’...?” Meiling repeated, tilting her head. “I thought it would be interesting if we’d picked up a lolicon, so I asked if you were one. Because most of the members of our house are little girls, that would’ve been quite something. Are you attracted to the fairy maids, by the way?”

“No...” he answered with disgust. The fairies were just children. Perhaps he’d sing a different tune seeing them in the baths, but living with fae made them thoroughly undesirable. Like being attracted to your family of a hundred younger sisters.

“Well, I also laughed because it was funny to think you’d be smuggling a little girl. There are so many to choose from in the Mansion, after all!” followed Meiling, smiling brightly. He looked at her with an expression of somewhat deep concern.

It really was easy to forget that Hong Meiling had rather warped morals.

“Well like I said I wasn’t smuggling her, either... I was... I was just making her feel better,” he explained, sitting up straight and frowning.

“If you want, I can let you two use my bedroom and you can sleep together all you like! It’s a great place since it’s not connected to the main building!” She gave him a thumbs up, he sputtered with surprise again. “I know it’s gotta be hard finding places for you two to have sex,” she went on unabated, even as Gen began coughing, “but I don’t mind helping you out! We’re friends and colleagues, after all!”

“Th-Thanks...” he answered, shaking now. Uh...


[] I think I’ll take her up on that offer.

[] ... That would be a really, really bad idea, wouldn’t it? Forget it.


“So, are you attracted to the Mistresses, Sir Gen?” Meiling queried, cocking her head again. His shoulders sank.

“Of course,” said the boy in a tired voice. “Anyone would be. The Mistresses are gorgeous.”

“Ahh, but you like Miss Flandre more right?” Meiling teased, pointing at him.

“I love Mistress Remilia and Mistress Flandre,” he answered flatly. He knew better than to ever suggest he liked one Scarlet sister over the other, at least not ever aloud. Either one of them could kill him over such a thing, and more importantly their feelings would be hurt.

“Oh, did you give Mistress Flandre that gift you said you’d hand her personally?”

“Not yet...”

“I hope that she likes it!”

“Me too.”

“What about that request Lady Patchouli made of you? How is that progressing?”

“Hm. About that...”

Dinnertime wasn’t long off...

As Gen explained his idea to Meiling, he kept that in mind. It wasn’t often that everyone ate together. Breakfast, lunch, dinner—all meals happened wherever you were; Sakuya would find you, and present you with a tray.

He was very much looking forward to it, and especially: he was looking forward to keeping this talk up with Meiling in the dining room especially. Even rarer was the day they broke bread together...

And he’d realized, he had a peculiar and particular, precious bond with the guard of Scarlet Devil Mansion. It was the sort of nonsense, absurd thing that could only function in a world very lacking in common sense. In fact, that was what kept the two worlds truly separate: a border of common sense.

How ridiculous, he thought, and he smiled. I think that last year, had I seen this scene in a vision I’d have called it a pure illusion.

I suppose that’s fine.

I think I prefer lacking common sense.

++++++++

image sources:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3582867
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3486183

~~

[ ♫: https://mega.nz/#!AYUmCQzT!4tbRK1M5_Nq4etB3hKlBHqUSyihyknWzs3e8zm7DXzo ]
[紅魔館 - 幻奏演舞 幻想人形演舞MusicCollection (FocasLens)]

“But, honestly—! Only five tracks? Why, I was certain CDs held more than double that, yet this—!”

“CDs use uncompressed audio, but with the rise of the mp3 format and thus better compression, the file size is smaller.”

“Wha—”

“Songs tend to be up to five megabytes in size, and the iPod we have is forty gigabytes. There are one thousand per gigabyte and—”

“Hey, wait, stop stop—”

“—that means that for every gigabyte you can hold about... two hundred songs? And because there are forty gigabytes on that... hm, eight thousand I think?”

“WHAT!?”

“Ten if you go down to one hundred twenty-eight kbps.”

At the head of the dining room table, Remilia clutched her knife and fork with a look that spoke of blasted revelation.

“THERE ISN’T EVEN THAT MUCH MUSIC IN THE WORLD!!” she cried. Gen, sat beside the gatekeeper a little ways down the table, wondered whether that was or wasn’t true. It probably wasn’t.

“If CDs came with twelve,” chimed in Patchouli Knowledge, seated near and to her friend’s left, “and there were even just twenty artists releasing twelve-track CDs per year, in about forty years ten thousand original pieces would’ve been made. These are using too-generous estimates.”

“I believe electronic music, and recording, have been around since the late nineteenth century, correct?” posited Sakuya, who was seated opposite Patchouli. Remilia glared at her. “Ergo, using too-generous estimates, more than twenty thousand original pieces would have been made, recorded and sold since that time.”

“How mwush mujic dihd recordsh shtore?” asked Meiling through a mouth stuffed with rice.

“A bit over forty minutes,” Gen answered. “Twenty-two, each side.”

His father collected a few vinyls.

The table they were all sitting at was several meters long, and rather wide as well. The fairies were one room over—everyone was half-keeping an eye on them, ready to stop any rabble-rousing. The fairies’ room was very spacious, on the X and Z axes; on the Y axis it came up short. Height was instead given to the main dining area (though it had less horizontal space). In fact, the Mansion’s clock tower blended with this room overhead, and if you were to find some way through the ceiling you would be met with staircases, giant gears, and eventually an enormous glass face. You’d have to fly or climb up quite a ways... The entire room was very ostentatious. A chandelier glowed above: mostly red of course.

“Very foolish, Elder Sister,” remarked the younger sister, who was sitting across from himself and Meiling. She waited for Remilia’s glare to change direction her way before elaborating, meanwhile absently spinning her fork between her fingers so that a cube of meat would rotate atop it slowly. “You don’t know very many songs, then? That’s so uncultured.”

Remilia scowled. “I don’t want to hear that from someone who thinks that a recording which contains twenty seconds of screaming counts as music,” she retorted.

“It’s thirty seconds,” replied Flandre, closing her eyes. “I counted.”

“The song you chose was much better than that, though,” Remilia went on while taking more from her plate. Before putting what was now on her fork into her mouth she shut her eyes and asked, “How can you like both?”

“My tastes are ‘eclectic’,” said her sister, before biting what was atop her fork—bitten, it should be noted, at the same time as her older sibling. The employees at the table looked at one another upon seeing this, and gave a chuckle each.

Gen turned to Meiling then and began asking how she knew of vinyl records. In the meanwhile Remilia and Flandre continued to verbally swipe at one another, and the remaining two took to finishing more of their plates. Before dinner they had all gathered around Remilia while she was presented with and listened to the iPod they had gotten her. Her reaction upon hearing Nightwish’s song had been astounding: the vampire’s eyes had sparkled, and her foot was soon tapping.

She liked all the music but Aphex Twin’s Come To Daddy. Though they had made her save it as the second to last track (leaving another as a palate cleanser), she could never have been made ready for such an unusual sound. Gen thought, she only needed time to truly feel it.

Thanks had gone around, dinner was set, and conversation took place. It was a proper, lively, SDM evening. Such was it pleasant and enjoyable that it was easy – even when he took a break to make headway through his plate – to forget the amount of blood covering and imbuing the Mistresses’ dishes.

As long as I’m not eating it, I’m fine with it, thought Gen.

“What of sealing? That is magic too, no?” He heard Sakuya speaking, and looked up from dinner to pay attention.

“It is and it is not. There are a few methods to seal someone or something,” his Master explained.

“And do any of the magic methods work with gods and such?” Sakuya wondered. His Master nodded.

“Though the arts are unreliable,” she confessed. “Calling gods, too... In most cases you would need a priestess. The foundations of those connections are made through faith, not research and magical power.”

“Hmmm...” Sakuya looked his way.

“Oh? Gen? Were you dabbling in gods?” asked Patchouli tilting her head.

“I—was curious about a god,” he said quickly after fixing his posture.

“Which?” Patchouli asked.

“Iwanagahime.”

“The god residing on Youkai Mountain?” she asked. “You wanted to do something with her?”

“Uh, no,” he answered. It was the truth, in a fashion.

“Iwanagahime...” repeated Patchouli. She lifted her teacup and leaned back in her seat. “You couldn’t possibly do anything about her. I couldn’t either. Not only is she a god, she’s an old and special one. Special, although I’ve read that she comes across as rather plain.”

“H—Hmmm...?” Gen uttered, trying not to let on that he knew what his Master had read was essentially correct.

“Why were you interested in her?” she asked, her question absolute and direct.

“The smoke on Youkai Mountain... I was wondering how it worked,” he told her.

“It’s that goddess’s doing, so if that was your theory you’re quite correct.”

“Why does she make smoke rise...? The volcano isn’t active, right?”

His Master smirked. “Maybe,” she said.

Worrying, he thought, and his concern showed on his face.

“It isn’t the kappas’ factories?” Meiling asked.

“Kappa...” muttered Gen, “Marisa mentioned them before. Was there a belief that the kappa were responsible for the smoke?”

Meiling nodded.

His Master answered the guard’s question, saying, “No. Rumors aren’t facts. I seriously wonder how you go through life being so superstitious.”

And Meiling was taken aback. “Wha—! It’s a popular rumor in the village!”

“Tell me when rumors begin becoming realities. Until then, I don’t want to hear about guesses,” said Patchouli, words cold enough to make the other youkai shiver. Next to her, Remilia smirked, pointed, and said:

“Rumors are where theories rise from, and the fruit of a successful theory is ‘fact’.”

“Wasn’t it my job to learn things? What do you know about theories and research, Remi?”

“I know quite a lot,” said the vampire, sitting back and opening her hand as she turned it over. Patchouli sighed and drank more of her tea as Remilia Scarlet continued on. “It is the duty of the nobility to be aware. In some regards, I know even more than you, Patche.”

“You didn’t even know how much music might exist in the world... and music isn’t even close to my specialty,” answered Patchouli, looking somewhat miserably at her friend as she took her teacup from her lips.

Remilia pointed again. “Then, shall we have a knowledge-off? I’ll show you that your given name is only that! Surely I can best you...” she trailed off, and loudly declared, “... at TRIVIA!”

“Very well,” Patchouli replied. “I will trounce you, and as a reward I’ll have you assist me in research for a week.”

Upon hearing this condition, Remilia’s charismatic mask broke—though for only a second. “H-Hmm! Yes! That’s fine! And when I win, I’ll have you... read to me! At night!”

Ah damn, I want to play and lose, Gen thought, frowning sadly.

Patchouli, on the other hand, smiled. “We’ll have Sakuya moderate,” she said, roping in his colleague without her consent. Sakuya did not mind. She looked serene and pleasant, rather. “I’ll enjoy you regretting this,” the magician declared in all confidence. Remilia scowled.

“You’re so cocky! Hmph!” was what she had to say. Nobody commented on the hypocrisy, though Flandre did roll her eyes. The Mistress sat up from her seat, planting her hands on the table. “Nobody else intrude!” she ordered. “Especially not you, Gen!” Gen pointed at himself and raised one of his bushy brows. “Yes, you! I don’t need you assisting her in secret!”

“What about openly?” he asked.

“Quiet!” she answered.

“Alright, Mistress,” he replied, bowing his head. He was most sore that he had to accept this, though. So, so very sore.

And so, all the ruckus to die down. The two old friends and the head maid would be holding their contest in another room. Everyone else was to go elsewhere—not necessarily to perform any duties, however. The Mistress cared to do this at regular intervals: giving everyone within the mansion an evening of no serious responsibilities, and perhaps even a little Mansion-centered party. It helped mental health, was the reason she’d given him when he asked. His Mistress truly was a noble heart.

As he and Meiling cleared the tables in the main and side dining room (the fairies hated such work), he wondered how he’d spend his night. Hanging out with Meiling was tempting... Finding Flandre was very tempting. He also thought about heading to the Mansion’s roof, where he was quite sure Onozuka Komachi would notice him waiting.

Regardless of what he decided, he was sure tonight would continue to be grand and lovely, and that was especially something he needed after the failures of today.


[] Hang with Meiling for the night.

[] Find and talk with Mistress Flandre.

[] Head to the rooftop.


Also;
This choice is still open
Meiling has offered her bedroom to Gen for his use with Ibuki Suika, whenever they wish to be intimate.

[4] I think I’ll take her up on that offer.

[0] ... That would be a really, really bad idea, wouldn’t it? Forget it.

[X] Find and talk with Mistress Flandre.


~~

[♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=O5x77dSPYnA ]
[Secret Library Daguerreo - Final Fantasy IX Piano Collection (Uematsu Nobuo)]

In the kitchen, after he and Meiling had cleaned everything and set it to dry, Gen fished the water toy he had bought out from his pockets to bring it to a sink. He’d drained it after purchasing it from Kourindou (of course) and decided to refill it. He was going to see his younger Mistress.

Finding her was as “simple” as it could be. The mansion was very lively now that night had very much fallen. The hallways felt brighter than during the day, in fact. To find Flandre, he simply had to find where liveliness and light died—putting it in an uncomplimentary-sounding way. Or, not: Flandre Scarlet was a youkai, and a youkai particularly tied to the night, at that. It was also just a fact: most of the Mansion’s residents were quite afraid of her...

Within a hallway with half its lights taken out, and those remaining had been dimmed, Gen spotted through the darkness the lit lower edge of a random doorway. He knocked on the door, knowing the room’s occupant could only be his Lady Flandre or some strikingly bold invader.

“Mistress Flandre?” he asked at the door.

And a reply came at once. “Gen? What do you want? Come in. I don’t like talking to people through doors.”

He turned the doorknob and entered.

The younger vampire of the household was sitting on the carpet, leaning against an armchair, stuffed animal in hands as she stared absently at a cabinet on the wall to her left (and his right). He looked into the cabinet as well, seeing that it was full of board games from the outside world (and at least one box for shogi, which could be from either realm). Looking at it, a question arose in his head—but not one that he would ask or dwell on. Mistress Flandre was sensitive (or, more accurately, “volatile”).

“Evening, Mistress. Alone again?” he asked.

“What’s that behind your back?” she asked immediately, ignoring his question and turning her eyes on him without turning her head. When she did turn her head, a smile began to part her lips—one that said she’d caught him in “the act”—though there wasn’t really any “act” at play here. “I see...” she spoke smoothly, her right fang glinting in lamplight. “You’ve finally come to me with a wooden stake, huh? I see, I see.”

Flandre spread her arms, letting go of her toy bear and allowing it to roll onto the floor. She put her head on the seat of the chair behind her, exposing her neck in time with a pushing out of her chest.

“Be gentle, though,” she said. “And, if you’ll let me make a second request: please spare this child.”

Her right hand lazily indicated that she meant the stuffed bear.

“Mistress,” Gen began, sourly, “cut that out.” This joke was in very poor taste.

“Ehhh? You aren’t here to kill me?” Flandre asked, lifting her head. “Is that alright? The child is innocent, but I’m such a terrible, terrible, malevolent being.”

“Which would you like to hear: my saying that you aren’t, or that you most certainly are?” Gen asked.

“I’m not my elder sister,” Flandre replied, and she let her head rest again.

“... You aren’t those things, Mistress Flandre,” he said, and to that Flandre said nothing. “May I offer a gift to the innocent younger sister of Scarlet Devil Mansion?” he went on, leaning very slightly forward.

“A stake...!” gasped Flandre, lifting her hands and spreading her fingers into exaggerated, clawed postures. “Through my heart...!” she howled dramatically, and she threw her hands over the source of her precious little lifeblood.

“Can’t you stop!? That’s horrible!” the apprentice snapped.

“Right...” Flandre sat up as she whispered this, giggling after in—what else but a devilish way. The vampire girl looked at him. “You wouldn’t let me puncture you, so I can’t let you puncture me can I?”

Gen was not an oblivious boy. He frowned a disapproving frown at his younger mistress.

“What do you stand to gain from putting it that way?” he asked, embarrassed enough that his words were delivered almost in a grown.

“What way?” asked Flandre, with waving at him a mock gesture of befuddlement with her right hand. “In Japanese?”

“... No—”

“English WOULD be better!” she said loudly, closing her eyes and raising both hands now and shrugging and grinning openly. “It’s a much better language than the Japanese I have to speak in this silly land!”

“You sound like Lady Remilia now—”

“Oh, Gen. Was it the innuendo?” the girl asked, as if she had only just realized. The look in her now-open eyes said she definitely had not.

“You’d ordinarily say ‘bite’, wouldn’t you?” he answered, sighing.

“You wouldn’t let me bite you... I certainly won’t let you bite me,” Flandre replied, laughing again, The boy could tell: he was now blushing a little.

She’s talking nonsense again... he thought miserably, his shoulders slumping. Better to cut to the chase.

“I brought you something far less-compelling than what we got for Mistress Remilia, but I thought you might enjoy trying to master it, Mistress Flandre!” He forced the conversation ahead.

“What an exciting way to say you picked up a lazy souvenir for me! Thanks!” said Flandre happily. She was not being sarcastic.

“It wasn’t lazy... I thought this was a decent idea,” he spoke honestly, and a bit hurt, as he revealed the toy he’d purchased.

“What the heck is that? Are those rings? Are they candy? Is that food?” A slew of questions came at once, all as honest as could be.

“It’s not food,” Gen answered one of them, and then pressed one of the game’s yellow buttons. Water rushed up and swirled some of the rings in the tank. None landed on any of the pegs within.

“It’s a snow globe that’s box-shaped? It’s a box globe?” Flandre had stood up and was now walking toward him, her eyes focused on the little plastic toy. The smile on her face was now one of interest and amusement.

“Wouldn’t that naming schema lead to ‘snow box’? And it’s not that anyway. This is a game,” he replied, taking his other hand to it and trying to play the little thing properly. It really was more of a storm simulator, if he was to explain it more honestly. The little rings danced one intense and wild dance, being buffeted by rapid and interchanging water jets, but a wild dance wasn’t something controllable. After a minute of attempting success, a yellow ring settled over one of the pegs (all of which were mauve in color ), and he breathed out.

“One of them landed around that thing there!” said Flan in surprise. Perhaps she was convinced about her snow box theory, and thus genuinely had not expected some sort of game to manifest within it or show itself to be the (hidden(?)) main purpose. He could see her face through the water tank, and realized he didn’t usually stand before either of the Scarlets. They were both extremely tiny, and seeing the discrepancy between his height and theirs proved a bit of trip. The two were always so imposing, after all; their stature and charming fashion undercut that aura of intimidation.

He got the urge to pick up the Scarlet standing in front of him, but he also – firmly – had no death wish.

He needed to sit down or change where he was standing...

Gen walked over to the wall beside the cabinet, leaning against it once he reached there and playing with the water ring toss all the while, pretending that his Mistress’s cuteness was not disarming him. Flandre followed, eyes still transfixed.

“... Ohh,” she eventually breathed. “‘Ring toss’, right!? I’m pretty sure that’s the name!”

“Have you not played ring toss before, Mistress Flandre?” asked Gen, looking at her face now not through the tank, but directly.

“Festivals have too many people, and fairs show up more often in the day,” she explained.

He gave her the device.

“This is an honestly cheap imitation, using more randomness than actual control or skill to win. I’ve never won at it. I’m not sure anyone really has,” he said. “Kids usually play this on long car trips. It’s just something to waste time.”

“You can use different levels of pressure, huh...” his Mistress muttered as she fiddled with the game, testing its limitations. “Car trips... A rocking and bouncing car would totally mess up the balance.”

“I don’t think it’s balanced in the first place,” he retorted. Flandre, extremely focused on her new task, pressed at the two buttons and, in a few seconds, landed five of the rings onto the highest of the three pegs within. “... Hmm??” Gen made a sound of confusion.

“I’m not really sure I get it yet,” said Flan, almost to herself, “but I think I can figure this little thing out! ... Oh yeah, you said ‘master’—you think I can master this?” She met his eyes.

“I’m pretty sure you can eventually master anything, Lady Flandre,” said Gen, not even trying to sound complimentary—his voice and tone told that he was merely stating the truth. He crossed his arms, shifting his against-the-wall posture, and he admitted, “But, I was actually a lot more certain you’d never figure it out, because I was almost one-hundred-percent positive that these toys were unbeatable scams.”

Flandre huffed a breath from her nose and looked up at the human pitifully. “You bought me a scam toy,” she said, bluntly.

“I was interested in see your frustrated face...” he said, frowning with disappointment.

“Why did Elder Sister hire weirdo humans to take care of us...?” Flandre muttered, her wings slumping in a tired fashion.

“I’m technically not hired, I’m the live-in apprentice of Lady Patchouli,” he clarified.

“I’ll complete this game like it’s nothing,” Flandre went on, pushing at its buttons a few more times. “But it’s cheap, right? What will you give me if I beat it quickly?”

“What will I give you?” he repeated.

“Yeah, what will you give me?”

He thought about it.

Can’t give you my hand in marriage, anymore... “I would love to give you another gift,” he said, eyes closed in thought. He looked very pleased with himself.

“Yeah, okay, so what will the gift be?” Flan ignored his silliness.


[] “A kiss.” (on the cheek)

[] “I’ll play with you for an entire day.”

[] “Shall I serve you for an entire day?”

[] “What do you want, Mistress Flandre?”

[X] “A kiss,” he replied.


“Pfff!” A burst of air was forced out from Flandre’s lips. With her eyes closed, she chortled heartily. “Kyaha! Ahahaha! Gen, you’re so stupid!”

The apprentice faux-gasped, lifting his bushy brows. “That wouldn’t do?” he asked.

“A reward for you is supposed to be a reward for me?” she asked, looking at him with eyes that told she thought he must be joking. “Don’t kid yourself, Gen.”

“Even if it was on the cheek?” he asked.

“I’ll let you kiss me on the cheek if you learn how to walk tightropes or something. Until then, you can’t kiss me at all!”

“Tightrope...” He looked as if he was thinking about it. “Well, forget that then,” he answered, relenting.

“Don’t give up so quickly! ... Ah. Ahhh...” She continued playing her little water game, sounding disappointed as a ring fluttered away from one of the pegs. “Anyway, no. Something else.”

He thought things over.

“... Playing with you, or serving you all day: which would you prefer I do, Mistress?” he eventually asked.

“Hmmm...” Now Flandre thought things over. After a few seconds, she answered, “The first one. Play with me when I beat this,” speaking with an almost dismissive tone: the tone she took when she was genuinely giving an order, request, or command. Hearing it, Gen stood straight and nodded, once.

He told her. “If you can, then I will.”

“I will, and you will,” she said with extraordinary calm. Her focus was on the game. Gen watched it as well.

“... And if you do well then...” she suddenly spoke up again, and he turned his eyes onto her. Peeking up over the top of the toy, her eyes met his as she told him, “... maybe I’ll reward you right back.”

“...” He stared, not moving any muscles in his face.

... Mistress Flandre is flirting with me again.

It’s never possible to tell how serious she is, either..

If she ever pushes me down again, then...

He told her, “Right, I await the day.”

She returned her gaze to the game and said, “By patting your head.”

“Ehh...?”

--End of Chapter 16: Ordinary SDM--

[X] Blood.


[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzdgIYzoZUY ]
[Soulless Village, Bran Bal - Final Fantasy IX Piano Collection (Uematsu Nobuo)]


Or, that is what the boy was inclined to believe from what he read. In a secret room, with a cadre of fair folk, he read aloud a black passage from one of the tomes they had brought. He spoke of death; sacrifice; viscera, entrails, and the letting of blood. The fairies shivered in fear, and listened.

“And to have the blood at its hottest, to have the heat of life bound truly eternal, you must extract the heart you require as it still beats...” he read.

The flame lighting their hideaway flickered, and the fairies shrank away. The boy looked over the text again.

“... No mistake about it,” he judged. “Blood; and obviously mine won’t do...”

One of the childlike beings around him piped up, trying to ask, “A-Are you gonna—?”

He replied: “Cut one of your hearts? No. Even if fairies are effectively immortal...” He returned to the tome.

What would be best... he wondered.

There were a few candidates...


[] A chicken, of which there were plenty.

[] An innocent rabbit.

[] A devilish goat.

image source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/59620338

++++++++

[X] A devilish goat.


And there were many peaks to choose from where they would be grazing. Gensokyo was mountainous; it did not only have one “Mountain”. Furthermore, his maid peer had taught him the basics of hunting.

“We’re going, to find a goat,” he said. The fairies swallowed, and nodded.

So, still in secret (afforded by some of the fairies’ powers), he sojourned to a nearby hill outside the mountain. They quietly snuck up on a lone serow. He cursed the stout, fluffy creature to fall asleep, and had the fair folk help him bring it back down. The morning crawled toward noon. He stared at the sun in the sky, thinking nothing. Though... soon, a thought: if this was successful...

If it was, indeed, successful:

He would have passed his Master’s test with flying colors.


Friday morning.
Nine days remain.


“A-Are you really gonna do this, Sir Gen...? Do we have to be here when you do it?” asked the flaxen-haired Parchment beside him. They had returned to their hideaway, and the goat was unconscious before them, resting on a slab, upon which was writ a magic circle.

“You’re dulling the sound, Parchment,” he replied. “May is obscuring the entrance, Thelma is maintaining the shadows around us...” He lifted a finger before his lips and told her straight: “This is a secret for only us. We are doing something the rest of the Mansion can’t hear of,” because I don’t want them mocking me for failing in the first place.

The blond gulped, and the rest of the crew shivered.

“Don’t worry...” said the Magician’s Apprentice, “the Mistresses will have goat for dinner.”

~~

[ ♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=KrFHVpPN4B8 ]
[渡し舟の娘 - TOHO BOSSA NOVA (ShibayanRecords)]

“Incredible, Gen! You’ve exceeded my expectations once more! This is wonderful—excellent work!”

Against this shower of praise from his Master, Gen stood frozen in place, an open and almost incredulous smile worn on his face.

In the library, his Master was standing with the blanket he’d just given her, infused with the essence of a living goat’s blood. She had, slowly, gone over the make of the article itself, and also the composition of the spellwork upon it, and she had grown increasingly, visibly delighted throughout her evaluation, ultimately resulting in this.

“You sacrificed a beast’s heart for this, didn’t you? Was it... Ah, it must have been a goat, right?”

“Y-Yes, it was a goat.”

“It’s so warm...! A serow’s blood! I’m so proud of you!” She brought the blanket to her face and clung to it, ecstatic.

“W-Well...” he began his response, trying to straighten his back as he continued, “it wasn’t simple magic, for sure. I get why during sacrifice rituals I’ve seen in movies and stuff, there’s usually a circle of people practicing it...”

“Indeed! You have to keep the beast panicked for something like this. Dark rituals are very delicate—at any point you could’ve been lacerated and drained of blood yourself in the process!”

Wow. I knew that already but she said it so plainly.

“Did you induce panic using a nightmare?” his Master asked, still glowing and smiling.

He nodded. “I did.”

“Did you make sure to ward yourself properly beforehand, so that it doesn’t visit you tonight?”

“Yes.”

“A greater nightmare? A lesser nightmare?”

“Lesser...”

“Good. Then I expect your wards to hold. You’ve really done so well! Is there anything else...”

“Master... you’ve never been this pleased with me before,” noted Gen, now standing straight and folding his arms. He was feeling rather overwhelmed.

“You’ve taken a huge step in performing this magic,” Patchouli said, smiling enough that her cheeks were being pushed up. She did not elaborate, however. Therefore...

He said, outright, “What step is that? I just performed by the book, though it was difficult to manage everything.”

“My student is really fantastic. You don’t even realize, and that’s what makes you exceptional. I wonder when it was? When did you become this dedicated to the Art?”

“What do you mean?” he sincerely asked this. His Master sighed pleasantly through her nose.

“If you don’t understand... perhaps one of your friends will let you know. Gen, you’ve really performed splendidly. Will your drive bring you to my level?”

“Of course!” he swore, just as sincerely as before.

“Good. Meet me here, my prized Apprentice,” she invited him, and for a moment—just a moment—something of an understanding came to him. However, he couldn’t truly recognize it; it slipped away. “For today, I want you to settle down. Please avoid using magic as well.”

“Huh??” Gen was utterly incredulous. He then gasped, asking, “Did I exhaust myself by accident?”

Patchouli shook her head (still, the smile never left her lips). “No, just do as I say. You can enjoy yourself however you like, but don’t use any magic.”

“Does that include flying?” he wondered.

“It does.”

“Even flying!?” He couldn’t believe this.

The Magician put on a sly face, and smoothly gave her apprentice a warning: “If I detect that you have used magic today, I will deliver that punishment onto you that I promised.”

You never “promised” anything of the sort! he snapped back in his mind.

“I will put this away,” said his Master, turning with the cloth in her hands and seeming to finally calm down. She was still in an evidently grand mood, however. She seemed outright giddy, and he noticed a concerning rasp in her voice.

But, she glided away before he could ask about that.

Alone, he realized: ... All that, and she didn’t hug or pat me. That’s... That’s quite awful.

He scowled, turning toward the entrance of the library and marching forth.

Miss Suika will hug me... he thought. And, he smiled. I’m in a great mood. Let’s go on a date!

But to where?


[] A date in flowering fields.

[] A date in the Human Village.

[] A date wandering Gensokyo’s farmlands.

image source: https://twitter.com/htk_mikan/status/1155862752591618048

++++++++

[X] A date wandering Gensokyo’s farmlands.

~~

[ ♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=hsSggjl8SLo ]
[手を叩こう- 東方猫鍵盤3 (Buta-Otome)]

He left the mansion during midday, and so even from the door he could tell that the Lake had been consumed by mist. He stood at that door with his hands in his pockets, feeling the breeze running through the hair that poked from behind his hat. The breeze shifted the mist not an inch... to that strange Lake, it was as if wind did not exist.

In silence, he trudged through the front gardens, toward the Mansion gate. To himself, he thought, Can’t fly over, can’t fly past...

At the gate, he rattled a bar, grabbing the guard’s attention.

Meiling looked at him quizzically and went through the slightly bothersome process of opening the way for him.

“Could you not just fly?” she asked as he stepped through.

“Master Patchouli’s orders are... I can’t,” he told her.

“And yet you’re going out?” she asked while locking the gate again. She acted very smoothly... this was common around noon. The mist meant she needed to actually be attentive during this hour every day.

“I want to see my lady friend...” he said absently, withdrawing a small roll of paper from one of his pockets, and his pen from another. He wrote something on the paper, and waited, thinking, This should be fine. The magic is already cast, and I’m not using any manipulation of spirit—mine or otherwise.

“Be careful,” bid Meiling, and she returned to her position, peering into the white fog before her.

Ten seconds later, a tengu flew down to the young magician’s left, kicking up a gust as she did so. Meiling took a stance at once, relaxing upon her notice that the ordinarily very wary and jumpy Gen was entirely unconcerned. If he was unconcerned, that meant he knew who this was. And of course, he did.

The twin-tailed bird lifted her head after landing, and with a brilliant look in her eyes she asked him, “What’s up, Gen!?”

“Hatate...” he began, asking as he turned his head: “It’s fine if I write you from here?”

“I figured I knew what you were thinking yesterday... so, I stopped you. If you’re just making contact from Scarlet Devil Mansion, it’s fine,” the tengu explained, standing generically (for a tengu) on one of her geta.

“Thank you for not always following me, as I asked,” he told her.

“Not to worry!” said the bird with a smile and a polite-looking hand gesture beside her face. “I know how to respect my subjects, unlike some people.” She meant Aya. “So? Why’d you want me?” she asked.

“Could you find where Miss Suika is and tell her to come to the Mansion?” he requested.

“Gegeh—!” Hatate made an absurd noise while recoiling and shutting her eyes. “Th... The oni!?” she confirmed.

“Please do it,” he bid lightly, really pleasantly.

Hatate answered, “Fine...” rather sheepishly, looking askance, and she spread her wings. Beating them once, she... probably entered the sky, and was gone.

“Gen... a tengu? You’re risking a lot...” Meiling noted behind him.

“She’s pretty harmless,” he explained, stretching his arms and fingers.

“Even if she isn’t dangerous herself, she can spread harmful rumors... or worse: truths about you. It could come back to you badly,” his friend told him, speaking in a serious whisper. He smirked at her.

“If it comes to that,” he said, “at least I’ll know who to roast later.”

“Hehh... I suppose,” said the guard, returning to her stance once more. A bead of anxious sweat was stopped on her cheek. “... Gen, is something different about your ki?”

“...? Wouldn’t you know that better than me?” he asked, returning his hands to his coat pockets.

“Well, I’m not su—Heh!?”

For a moment, they both froze with fear. A great wind had blown past them and the lake had become void of mist. The sun shined on both of them now perfectly. The phenomenon had been summarily dismissed, out of nowhere, and so they both looked at the sparkling waters yards out ahead in utter disbelief.

The mist filled in once again in a few seconds, and a solid shape formed from it, in front of their eyes: a small shape, flanked by a pair of what looked simultaneously akin to stalactites as well as an old tree’s branches.

“Oh...” Gen sighed with relief. “It’s Miss Suika.”

The oni dropped to the grass in front of them once she was complete. A crow landed some paces behind her, looking nervous. The elder youkai lifted her head, smiling excitedly.

He threw scissors; she did as well. They grinned, and she stood, patting off her skirt.

She spoke first, “‘Sup, Gen? You start rulin’ the Mountain after yesterday?”

“I-I’m not at his beck and call!” mentioned Hatate behind her: blushing, raising her shoulders, and balling her fists.

“No,” Gen answered, smiling. “I’m just horribly calculating.”

“What’s up? You can’t fly or somethin’? It’s not like ya to not do stuff yourself. Mmn, c’mere, c’mere.” Suika raised her arms and beckoned him toward her. He of course obliged.

The oni took his face in her hands and brought it toward her own, kissing him on his lips and making some sort of highly pleased, squealing sound. With her claws at his temples and venturing beneath his hat, he felt an undeniable and rather embarrassing excitement. He close his eyes as she had closed hers, keeping his hands up as he had raised them prior in surprise.

“Mmmmmwuh!” She was being cute. She beamed at him, and he glowed in return.

He squatted to meet her height.

“S-So... Y-You two are really in a relationship?” Hatate asked while he looked into the oni’s face rather fondly.

He questioned the bird with a “You knew?” And then he answered, “Yes, we are,” as he reached over to that face he couldn’t look away from and cupped its cheek in his palm. Suika held his hand in both of hers, moving to enjoy the sensation of his relaxed fingertips on her skin and smirking enough that he could spot her fangs. After a few seconds, however, her smile vanished and she paused. With brows pushed together and lips pouted, she moved her head forward just slightly, lifted her chin a little, and sniffed at his wrist.

“Hmm...??” he gave a sound of confusion, raising one of his hefty brows. “Something the matter?” he wondered. Suika took her right hand from his and clawed not particularly gently at his chest, still looking as though she were determining something. She patted over his heart, and felt his ribs, palming under his arm as well. “What’s up?” he asked, a bit worried.

She pressed her nose into his wrist entirely and, looking askance, sniffed at him again—deeply.

“Gen, you...” she began... but she only ever began. Dropping the subject with a “Never mind” she said. “Um, we’ll talk about it later.”

Eeeehh...? I don’t stink, do I? I mean, I shouldn’t. I cleaned myself of the goat’s blood and properly rewound my clothing.

“What’s the matter, Gen? Do you stink again?” asked Meiling. He quickly turned his head to look at her in shock.

“He stinks?” asked Hatate, holding her nose and stepping back. He turned to her, sweating and bothered.

“He doesn’t stink,” said Suika quite bluntly. She started patting down his front, and pulling something from his clothes with her power. What, he wasn’t sure. It seemed to be black. She gathered a sphere of it smaller, in fact, than the span of a one-yen coin, and put that sphere between her palms, whereupon she crushed it into nothingness.

Wiping her hands in a “job well done” gesture, she eyed him and asked, lightly, “So, what is it? A date!? Are you gonna take me on a date!?”

She got excited partway through and grabbed the front of his clothes, grinning with her nose against his.

“Yes... I wanted to take you on a date,” he replied, still thinking about what could possibly be the matter. He moved her hands off of his robes and stood up. “I need your help, though. Lady Patchouli forbid me from using magic. I want to walk through the farmlands...” He drifted off, looking toward where he meant. Then, he let his head fall back, draped his left hand over the front of his skull dramatically and bid, “Carry me!”

“Aight,” Suika said this as she chopped at the back of his left knee, causing him to plummet. As he stumbled in surprise she held out her arm, catching him by his back and subsequently sweeping him off his feet. With his hand still draping his forehead, he blinked at this chipper oni and thought to himself, My prince...

“Oh! Oh! Can I come too!?” This was Hatate.

“Of course not,” he said, and she seemed confused by this.

“You can watch from far away if you want, it’s not like we’re goin’ anywhere to hide; s’not like we’ll be in private or anything. Do what ya want,” was Suika’s somewhat slurred answer. He didn’t love it, but it was true: they weren’t going anywhere in secret. She met his eyes then and told him, “Keep an eye out, ‘lright? I can’t see everything and you can’t use magic. We’re going someplace safe but I gotta cross the mist first and you look real yummy.”

He wasn’t sure how she meant that.

“I mean that ‘cause I wanna ‘eat you up’ but most youkai jus’ wanna eat you up, get it? Heheh.” Youkai humor.

He was getting more and more used to it.

Looking out as she requested, he awaited her leap into the air. It came in a second, and they were off; Himekaido Hatate keeping an appreciable distance.

^^^Update there, too, in case you missed it^^^

++++++++

~~

The journey was mostly safe...

His girlfriend had to kick a few lurking youkai in the face, but nothing serious occurred, Most, it seemed, could recognize her unusual silhouette through the fog, as even with her carrying a full-grown human male in her arms that silhouette had an absolutely unreal pair of arm-length shadow-horns.

Therefore, rather soon, they were on Gensokyo’s open roads.

[ ♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=V7xmoz-QXRk ]
[You're the Shine(Night Butterflies) – Milky Wink (FELT)]

Gen hadn’t traversed these much—or at least, he never really paid much attention while walking them. The roads were useless for someone interested in magic: the forests, mountains, and queer plains were all distant from here. You could somewhat rest assured that youkai wouldn’t be willing to attack you on this, the Human Village’s extended territory, but in exchange those precious materials were kept out your reach.

At least, aside from safety, there was another positive in that it really was a relaxing stretch of lands.

Flat with nay even the suggestion of a hill in side, and so beautifully green; the farms of Gensokyo stood unmolested and pristine, guarded by youkai and gods alike, in fact. Humanity was precious in this secret world, and near every being of fantasy within it recognized a native human’s value, even if gazing upon them caused grumbling stomachs and slips of drool out of mouths.

That wasn’t a nice thought. He moved his attention back to his surroundings.

Glimmering, water-full paddies, men and women trudging through them, barnyards with animals – the usual rural suspects – out to graze...

He was reminded, truly, how deep he was in the countryside.

In the Outside World he had no actual experience with such places, and here in Gensokyo he really only apprenticed. He went through woods and gathered materials... He explored beneath the Lake and studied in the Library.

Though a lot had changed, in some sort of way he still felt like he had it a bit “easy” when watching those humans go about their usual, effort-filled days... but only a moment. Only a moment did he think that. He himself knew how much of his life was poured into and bound steadfastly with magic.

“Nice, huh...” his oni remarked. He looked down to her, walking beside him.

The road was long and clear...

“It is,” he agreed.

“Gen, you ever done any farming?” asked Suika, meeting his eyes.

“I’m a city boy...” was his answer. “Have you, Miss Suika?”

“Mm-mm,” she grunted and shook her head.

“Really? In all this time?” he teased.

“H-Hey!”

“Surely this king of The Mountain had to have grown something on it? A few of rebellious legumes, perhaps?” he continued.

“I had other people grow stuff...!” she admitted, whining and embarrassed. He lifted his eyebrows. He was surprised she’d done even that much... He knew her as so thoroughly apart from a throne, having abdicated in times pre-history, that it still was somewhat difficult to picture her giving orders or instating laws. “What about fishing?” It seemed she wanted to get off the subject.

“You sure like asking questions about me,” he noticed. She blushed, and looked at the road before her feet, eyes widening.

“‘C... ‘Course I would! Aren’t you going to ask me stuff, too!?” she retorted. Oh, he thought, still wearing a smirk from having toyed with her, she’s annoyed.

“I prefer sitting down when I ask you questions,” he replied, looking out on the path they were traveling, spotting a few white birds and briefly wondering what they were. He told her: “Because I enjoy looking into your face as we talk. That’s harder to do while walking around... I’ve always got to keep aware of what’s around us and where we’re going...”

He looked down at her. She was hiding the face he liked to look at behind her hands. The tops of her ears, poking out from her hair, were a brilliant scarlet. Seeing this, Gen closed his eyes and smiled more genuinely.

“Also you’ve asked me that already: if I’ve ever gone fishing,” he revealed. She began to slouch; his heart warmed to see it.

“I didn’t forget—I was nervous!!” she almost screeched with embarrassment, and her words were ashamedly honest.

“Yeah, I got that.”

He came to a stop. She heard this and stopped as well, taking her hands from her face to reveal the shy and almost miserable frown behind it.

They were in front of one of the rivers which flowed out from the lake, and more specifically they stood in front of a rarely creaking water wheel, surely polishing rice inside the small building it was connected to. She looked up at him. He, with his hands in his pockets, was looking at the wheel.

“Well, if you’ve forgotten or not...” he said, “I haven’t gone fishing, and I’m looking forward to trying it as you suggested at the time.” He looked at her then.

Her nerves easing, she answered, “Yeah, it’ll be relaxing.”

“Old lady,” he said.

“Wh-Why do you keep making fun of me...!?”

“I’m in a giddy mood,” he admitted, chuckling.

“Gen... do you want to know how old I am?” asked Suika. He paused his chuckling with a knuckle before his lips, met her eyes and said:

“You can tell me whenever you’d like to. I really don’t care how old you are...” And suddenly, he felt his confidence waver. Looking back to the mill in front of him, sloshing indefinitely, he told her, “Your age, honestly even your looks... it doesn’t matter to me as much as who you are.” He frowned, feeling his face warm. “I like who you are, Suika.”

For a few seconds, she seemed to be looking at him in silence. When the seconds were up, she took a light hold of the wrist of the hand he still had in his coat pocket. She pulled at him, took his hand, and they stood side by side watching the river flow; the sun’s light falling over its surface and fragmenting a thousand times...

“... Gen,” the oni eventually said, “you did some sort of evil today, didn’t you?”

“Eh?”

That was sudden.

“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing her way.

“No—I mean, you did right? You couldn’t have done it without knowing what you did,” she said, glancing in return.

“... Sacrificing a goat?” he posited.

“... You did that without thinking!?” She was in shock.

He was mostly dumbfounded. “...” he went quiet, thinking over his actions again.

“... The goat had to die for the spell to complete,” he explained.

“No—that’s—Gen!“ she was flustered.

“What?” he was still confused.

“Gen, are you even sure about what you’re doing!? You can’t take this stuff lightly!” He looked at her with an expression that asked her to go on. She did. “You committed a minor act of evil for the sake of magic,” she said, holding his hand tightly, “that’s the first step to turning into a youkai magician!”

... Oh.

... It is...!?

“And it’s specifically when you’re becoming so dedicated you stop thinking about consequences...” she continued. “What’d you do to the thing?”

“I slaved its sentiment to an artifact so that the blood of its heart, or more specifically the heat that provides, would keep the artifact warm—it was—that was the task, you know?” he told her. He then rationalized with, “... I mean, I didn’t take its soul.”

“What sentiment, huh?” she bluntly interrogated.

“That... That doesn’t matter, does it?” he queried, his gaze beginning to wander off. He knew that it did.

“What kinda sentiment, boy!?”

“... Sfrng... fr...” he mumbled.

“Hah? Wanna say that clearer?” she pushed.

“Suffering and fear,” he admitted, with a face indicated he had needed to drag this admission out of his gut.

And she snapped a retort of, “See!”

“It had to suffer! For the spell!”

“That’s the point, idiot!”

“Actually, it was rather high level magic. An idiot couldn’t have done it,” he came back with this, sincerely and sternly.

“You’re a HUGE idiot!” she emphasized, lifting her free hand as she chastised him. “This is crazy! You’re already this far gone!? What did the fluffy magician say?” she asked,

“Fluffy”... She means Master, right?

“Lady Patchouli praised me,” he said with barely hidden pride.

Suika made a fist. “I’m going to hit you,” she said.

“What the heck!” he shouted, pulling back a bit.

“Of course she praised you! You’ve gotten so dedicated to black magics it’s taking a hold of how you think! You’re starting to turn into a sorcery conduit! You know what that is? Vessel? Battery? You’re turning into a completely magical being!”

“R-Really?” he asked with a shy and faltering smile. Suika’s eyebrows pushed together and up into a caret slope, and gazed upon him in disbelief.

“I’m not complimenting you, dumbass,” she growled.

“To me, it sounds like you should be,” he replied truthfully.

“Of course it would!” she replied back dismissively, waving out her fist. She then heaved a rattling sigh. “... Has your Master at least warned you about turning into a youkai accidentally?” asked his girlfriend.

... Ohhh.

He snapped the fingers of his right hand.

“That’s why Lady Patchouli forbid me from using magic today!”

“You should’ve realized it, stupid,” Suika rightfully scolded.

“Right; I know that falling too fast and incorrectly will end up turning me into a drooling creature, worse off than a beast,” he told her.

“Well... that’s good,” she admitted, her eyes now returned to the reflecting water running below their feet. She held his hand with more strength, and he returned the gesture. “... You shouldn’t become a youkai without thinking about it. What you are, from when you’re born, is special. You can’t ever really go back once you march forth.”

...

I know.

She turned her head. Seeing this out the corner of his eye, he turned his head as well, and they locked into one another’s gazes.

“Promise me something, Gen,” she said, and he listened. “Promise me you won’t use me as an excuse to turn if you do. That ain’t how it should be. You’ve gotta want it... for yourself.”

He gave what she said consideration, for almost a minute.

In the end he answered, “Of course I promise. My life in Gensokyo didn’t start with you, Suika... it only became that much brighter.”

She puffed a breath from her nose and smirked. “You’ve gotta make everything into a pick-up line,” she grumbled.

“Is it working?” he asked, his tone hopeful.

“You know it is, you...! You...!” She started jabbing at him playfully, and he caught her fist in his right hand with every mock blow. “Take it seriously...” she eventually whispered, gazing distant toward his stomach.

And he replied, “I do.”

The sound of a camera shutter rang out.

The couple looked toward the road they had wandered from, seeing Hatate there with her phone-camera out.

“... Great! It’s great!” said the tengu. “I’ll put it in your wedding album!” she said, closing the device and beaming.

The image of an oni and a human, holding one another’s hands before a sparkling river and an idyllic water mill.

Gen looked at her blankly. “... Did you have to?” he asked.

“Give me a copy,” Suika ordered. He frowned at her with some scorn.

Hatate waved a goodbye and returned to the skies.

Suika caught his attention again, now with a chipper smile. She asked him, “Where to now, my Husband?”

“Quit it...” he insisted. He looked off toward the Sun then, absently stroking her fingers with his thumbs. She resisted squirming.

“Where”, huh...


[] “Let’s keep going. I think there’s a sweet potato farm or stand around here.”

[] “You’ve gotten me a bit concerned about this ‘evil magic’ thing...
----[] “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go see a puppeteer I know.”
----[] “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go ask Marisa about it.”

image source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/75503861

++++++++

[X] “You’ve gotten me a bit concerned about this ‘evil magic’ thing...
----[X] “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go see a puppeteer I know.”

“Oh...? Sure!!”

Suika hopped in place and beamed as she said this.

“Ugh...” he groaned, “you’re so cute, Miss Suika. You’re always so happy, I can’t stand it.”

“Bask in my happiness!” she commanded, now speaking with arrogance. “Soak in it! Get happy yourself!”

“Yeah, I’m feeling it,” he said half-jokingly, taking a knee and waiting for the oni to pick him up.

“Good, ‘cause I bet you’re gonna need it.” She separated her hands from his, and slapped his bottom. A jolt of surprise shot through him, and he raised his eyebrows. “Talkin’ about evil and stuff... ish no good!”

Had she snuck more juice while he wasn’t looking?

The oni lifted him by his rear, raising him up over her head with one hand.

“I should squeeze yer butt more...!” she remarked. Now slightly embarrassed, he merely replied:

“P-Please go! Before someone sees this.”

“The crows see everythin’,” she breathed, still looking happy. She stepped backward, just lifting into the air. “I’ll get this picture too! Of my trophy husband!”

He attempted to look down and her while she held him shockingly steadily, only managing to twist and turn awkwardly. He tried to ask her, “Wh-Where’d you learn that ter—”

But she was flying toward the forest of magic before he could do so, or explain how within context... he was certainly no mere trophy. He was assuredly a catch.

The catch held his hands over his head and braced his entire body as his oni lover bounded over treetops, and began hopping on and through that lush canopy.

~~

He noticed that she already knew where Alice Margatroid’s home was.

Indeed, she had spent a while simply watching Gensokyo for the last month rather than showing herself in a more “ordinary” form. Right, he knew that.

Still, as he stepped from off the seat of her palm and palmed his butt in mild annoyance (and his shoulders, and clothes in general, which now bore a few twigs, leaves, and even spiders’ webs) he felt compelled to remark:

“You really are a voyeur, Miss Suika.” He straightened up after saying this, having been slouching until then.

“Nah, nahh; I’ve just looked’t people, out and about, or in ‘n not about, like this one.” She pointed, drunkenly, at the white western house before them. She looked at him in a daze and said, “This one doesn’t leave much.”

“Let’s just head in,” he replied, dismissing her defense. He turned as he spoke, and began to walk toward the front door. It struck him that the last time he’d approached this door “on his own”, he’d been very, horribly wary. That wasn’t the case at all anymore.

He knocked.

[ ♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=22h4X4MaokI ]
[snowdin - acoustic arrange - Undertale arrange (fjsmu)]

Shortly, he heard, “Yes? Who might it be?”

“An associate,” he answered.

“Gen? Right...” He heard her approaching the door. Opening it, she said, “It’s been four months. As scheduled you’ll be wanting another massage, then?”

He gave a bothered “No...” in response. His lady eyed him suspiciously. Seeing her, Alice lifted her eyebrows. In earnest, she hadn’t noticed that the oni was present.

“That is...” she trailed off.

Gen followed her gaze and put his hand down on the oni’s head.

“‘The oni’?” he posited.

“Yes...” muttered the blond magician, eyeing Suika for a while. Suika was still eyeing Gen. “She is with you... why, exactly?”

“She...” he paused, realizing “she” seemed suspicious of him, “... is annoyed, evidently. She massaged my shoulder, Suika.”

“Yeah? Why?” grunted the oni, now eyeing Alice with equal suspicion and not only a little malice. Alice seemed to raise her caution at this.

“I damaged it while rescuing spring,” he explained.

“And you scheduled another!? That’s not what you said you came here for!” She lifted a fist in a huff.

“She’s lying. We lie to each other,” he told the petulant youkai while looking at the one before him whom was apprehensive. “It’s one of our traditions.”

Alice then said, through a cool smile directed at the oni, “His other tradition is to leave me wet.”

Suika twitched.

He lifted his hand and flew backward from her fist, which had been swung at where his abdomen would have been had he remained. He stopped before one of Alice’s windows, crouched low and grasping at his heart.

“Did you have to put it that way!?” he yelled at the Magician he could no longer see.

“Would ‘soaked’ have been better? ‘Drenched’?” she asked around the doorway, wearing a light expression. “Ah... ‘sopping’, then?”

He frankly had no words for Alice, only a look of hate and utter disbelief.

“Suika!” he shouted before the oni could enter an oni-styled rage. “I’ve never lied, alright!? That’s the truth! Not to you—not once...! You understand!?”

She seemed to cool off from that, believing him.

But her sharpened gaze next pointed at the mage, who straightened her back and attempted to look polite rather than piss-afraid.

“Oi,” grunted the smaller, older youkai. She put a hand on her hip and gestured at Gen with her thumb, asking, “You wanna fuck my man?”

“Y-Your man!? Really!? I... I...!” This seemed to shock Alice Margatroid... in a right way. Ignoring the vulgarity of the question, she turned her head to Gen, grabbing the doorframe and looking at him with magic in her eyes. She exclaimed, “Really, Gen!?”

Idiot! She’s pissed off! he screamed internally.

“You stupid, puppeteer? I kicked your ass so easy it was like scratchin’ mine, and you think ignoring me is a good idea!?” Suika spoke with pure intimidation... That being said, he wasn’t sure that Alice felt it. “Go on! Answer truthfully! Oni hate liars!”

“Then...” Alice began, turning to look this oni in the eye, “you must really love Gen.”

He felt it in his face: he was blushing.

She, Suika, was beet-red now as well, and had been entirely thrown off guard.

“L-L-L-Love is...! That’s... not... somethin’ to say yet! E-E-EEeeven if I—No! I mean...! I... I... I LIKE him b-but....” Suika continued to stammer, lifting a finger and wagging it about as if she were a lector; standing on one foot and barely managing to keep her balance.

Then, Suika stomped her lifted foot down and screamed, “SHUT UP!” followed by, “SHUT UP!”

“My, you’re so upset,” Alice remarked. “May I consider this a victory, then? My revenge for your trouncing me a week ag... Goodness, it’s only been a week.”

Suika covered her face with her hands and screeched into her palms, muffling herself.

Gen stood; ashamed but forced to admit that this time, Alice had taken the point.

“Come inside, you two... what should I call you? ‘Shotgun newlyweds’?” said Alice, leaving them both embarrassed again. “I’ll put on some tea.”

~~

[ ♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI0Ft8WSgZo ]
[5pm – Animal Crossing (Kazumi Totaka)]

He realized hours later that he’d been lost in his own mind.

Looking up from his cup, which seemed to have recently been refilled, Gen shook off his pensivity. He was alone at the table. He thought to himself, Suika’s...?

It turned out, she was playing with Alice.

Wha...

The oni had one of her miniature clones out, and was watching as it played with one of Alice Margatroid’s dolls (Alice, obviously puppeteering the blond, skirted pseudo-girl). They seemed to be playing patty-cake. Had Alice taught the ancient youkai the game?

He looked back at his cup, lifted, and drank from it, looking out the window absently.

How long was I thinking for?

...

Did I take up one of Master’s bad habits?

She had a tendency of becoming very absorbed in a single subject.

No... just a rare, serious think for once: that’s all.

He’d spent that time organizing his thoughts and feelings; thinking of goals, how to achieve them and why he even wanted to achieve them at all. Magic... he thought much of magic. Without an assigned task, his mind wandered from possible experiment to experiment, and possible spell to spell. His materials... both on him, and at home. He’d thought of a lot.

But, he’d dropped his date for all that... that was a misstep, even if he’d taken it unintentionally.

Dumbass.

He cursed himself.

And, he finished his tea.

His stare distant, he realized that this matter would continue to be on his mind without it being soundly addressed. If he continued along with Suika, he knew that he’d be distracted and – perhaps only seemingly – gloomy.

She was having a good time. He had to leave...

... settle his mind.

He stood from his chair.


[] He was going to head to the Sanzu River. The Shinigami might have some words for what he was thinking now.

[] Perhaps the kappa Aomu would have an interesting perspective... Did she know of any humans who had turned “something else”?

[] A proper authority on these matters was absolutely Hakurei Reimu.

image sources:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2943841
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1348701

++++++++

[X] A proper authority on these matters was absolutely Hakurei Reimu.


“... Miss Suika, I’m going to head somewhere else. You’ve noticed I’m... confounded right now. I’m too distracted for this—our... date.” After saying this, and looking away from the two girls now looking back at him, he offered “Sorry,” and “see you tonight.”

He stepped swift toward the door, took up his coat, and gave Alice a nod and thanks. The little oni beside her stared after him with a wide-eyed, flush-cheeked face. The magician host nodded in return before her eyes fell on the stunned elder youkai. As the door opened and closed, Alice raised her eyebrows, covered her mouth with her three longest fingers, and asked herself whether or not it would be acceptable to indeed remark on the remarkable smoothness of the exited, gallant apprentice.

~~

Though he knew where he wished to go, and got to heading there with speed... Hakurei Shrine was really very far away from the Margatroid residence, and he hadn’t walked many places for a very long time.

For a while, Himekaido Hatate seemed to want to call out to him from the trees after he’d left the forest and gotten on the road to the Village. She mustered the courage when he was near to that settlement, flying to his side and asking, “Is something wrong?” He told her he was heading for the Hakurei Shrine to talk about some things.

“D... Do you want me to carry you there?” she’d asked him while her head was turned to the eastern border where one could find the barrier’s edge and the maiden who protected it.

He answered, “What? Of course not.”

She’d then shot him a look and given an emphatic, “What!? Why not!? You did it with that oni!”

He said, “Of course I did,” and moved along. The bird followed him, floating behind his back, which forced him to go around the Village instead of through it. Not that he hadn’t walked through the Village with youkai before; it just wasn’t worth any potential trouble if anything happened and he couldn’t use magic to handle the situation.

All in all, by the time he’d reached the Shrine’s staircase he could tell that the day was beginning to give out. He marched up the flight, Hatate leaning her back against his all the while as if he were a moving lounge seat, or he was a car and she a passenger. With a slight frown and a low brow, he continued unabated while the tengu futzed with her phone-shaped camera.

The torii gate approached relatively shortly (comparing how long it had taken him to get here at all). As he crested the hill, he heard the little shrine maiden’s usual sweeping. He looked at the sky, noting its darker blue.

[ ♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJG_SYgVUIc ]
[Ideal and the Real – Persona 5 The Royal (Meguro Shoji)]

“... Hm? Who? ... Oh. Gen. Hey.” That was the shrine maiden’s slow response. She looked past the young man’s shoulder and scowled. “That tengu, too...”

Hatate feigned ignorance, continuing to play with her phone camera.

“Hello Reimu,” said Gen.

“Egh...” Now Reimu opened her mouth awkwardly and winced, leaning away. “What? You look like you’re depressed.” She frowned, and eyed him warily, saying in no uncertain terms: “I don’t do therapy; I do exorcisms.”

“I just had some questions,” the apprentice revealed as Hatate glanced behind herself to look at the younger of the two humans.

“About?” asked Reimu as the apprentice walked forward.

“Reimu...” he began once he’d approached her to, in his opinion, a satisfactory degree (ultimately: a meter apart from her), “what really happens if I abandon my humanity?”

“...” Reimu stared at him, processing this. Her face then glowered as a growing, open-mouthed smile brightened it. Gen looked back at her in confusion. The child then brought her eyebrows together, smirked, pointed at her elder, and said, “Y’see...!? I was right! Me and Marisa were right!”

“What...?” What is she talking about? He hadn’t the faintest.

She continued to point, saying “You’re gonna turn because of love!”

He glared and said, “No.”

“I seriously can’t believe it’s with Suika, by the way...” she went on, ignoring him, prodding toward him without any touching. “You asked for her this morning... Why? So you could kiss?”

“It wasn’t for a kiss...!” He knew not to mention that they had kissed, however.

“You kissed when you were leaving the shrine the day before yesterday...” she reminded, smirking even more.

Gen shut his eyes, blushed, and gritted his teeth. After stewing in embarrassment a little while, he growled out the reasoning: “Miss Suika wanted that, so...”

“Why are you trying to tell me you’re not thinking of doing something crazy for love, then? You’re so obvious, and girls can see a love-struck face really well!” she boasted, holding her broom like a staff at her side and resting the knuckles of her free hand against her hip.

“Get your eyes checked,” he retorted flatly. Looking at her, he explained, “I’ve just realized I don’t mind the idea. Suika has nothing to do with it.”

She just looked at him, smugly. Hatate looked toward him, with pity.

“Okay,” he admitted, “she has something to do with it, too.”

“I know,” said Reimu, and finally she stepped closer and poked him: in his side. He bent to it, frowning. “Okay, so, what do you want?” Reimu finally allowed, him, though still she looked quietly self-satisfied.

“I want an answer to what I asked before you began teasing me,” he said. “What happens from giving up my humanity?”

“You should know that. Are you stupid? Is that librarian not teaching you right?” Reimu’s voice and expression were concerned.

“Right. You’re Reimu,” he said, realizing he’d made a mistake.

“Seriously... You don’t know or what? How about you tell me what you know, and if there’s something the purple witch hasn’t told you I’ll be nice and fill you in?” offered the haughty Reimu.

“Alright, well...” he started, standing up straight (Hatate stretched out her wings and readjusted her position), “if I become a youkai I gain quite a lot, including – assuming I became a magician, specifically – lots of spiritual power, new magical power and energy, no need to eat or drink, and agelessness. As for negatives... A shinigami insinuated she wouldn’t appreciate me going from human to youkai and...” He paused, thinking. “... Master has mainly informed me of the risks of doing things improperly,” he said, “if I screw up and corrupt myself by accident I can become a mindless, filth-eating beast for example. Master hasn’t encouraged or discouraged me from becoming a youkai. Actually... come to think of it, she’s pretty much the only one who’s never mentioned the possibility to me.”

“Hehh... she’s smarter than I was thinking,” Reimu gave her acknowledgement with a bothered face.

“Because she’s been coaxing me toward youkaidom without letting me worry about it? Alice said something like that,” he told her.

“Yeah, so don’t think she was the nicest one around you for not ever bringing it up: she didn’t bring it up so that you wouldn’t worry about it. And now here you are, asking a shrine maiden if giving up your humanity is all that bad. It worked.”

I guess... he thought to himself. Reimu watched his expression.

“Look: you don’t even mind—you’re totally gone,” said Reimu.

“But...” he began to refute her. “... it’s really not bad?”

“Of course you’d think that, that’s how she’s got you thinking, right?” asked the little girl, as if what she was saying was perfectly obvious.

I... guess...?

“Don’t deny it,” Reimu scolded him. “I guess I can’t blame you, but she sure got you good. I can’t break something like this; it’s in your head, it’s how you are now.”

Hmm...

Was it really?

“Well, I can tell you what you’re missing, but I’m going to hate saying it,” Reimu went on.

“Hm...?” he grunted meekly.

“Yeah,” answered Reimu. She sighed, looking toward some of the woods surrounding her shrine. He watched, and waited. “There are no ‘real’ downsides,” she said.

“... What?” he asked in disbelief. It was the last answer he expected.

“It’s an affront against nature and the cycle of life and death to do that. It’s a denial of ‘everything’ when you relinquish what you were and become something else. It’s a fake death, and a totally made-up life.”

“‘Made-up’?” he repeated.

“Manufactured, or artificial,” she clarified.

“I guess the shinigami did tell me that it wasn’t ‘bad’ inherently... she said hermits: those were problem ‘humans’.”

“You should ask Marisa or someone else more about hermits. I knew one, but she left a while ago and we weren’t particularly friendly, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. He nodded.

“I barely know about magicians...” she said in an irritated tone, grumbling. “I know why I say ‘human villagers can’t become youkai’, though.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because this world would completely fade away,” said Reimu, plainly speaking and looking into his eyes. “My job is to protect this world.”

A shiver pulsed through him, lifting the hairs on his neck and arms. It was a strange thing for a little girl to say... and with strange conviction.

“The more humans in the Village know about magic, and the more who abandon humanity, the closer we bring Gensokyo into a dead end... When I exterminate the Villagers who cross the line... I do it permanently.”

He went still.

He knew she meant “killing”.

“I told you before, I wouldn’t do that to you,” said Reimu. “You have a choice.”

“Why shouldn’t I take it?” he asked.

“The choice to become a youkai?” Reimu proposed.

He nodded, then said, “Yes.”

“That’s a better question for the Yama, I think...” said Reimu. “For you, it’s something inside you have to ask yourself, because it isn’t just a change of, say, color you’d be going through. That’s a change to self that can’t be reversed, as far as I know.”

“I see...” he whispered.

“You’re an outsider,” Reimu mentioned, “if you became a youkai, you could still go back to the Outside World at any time by asking me, but the world you recall now... the world as you’ve seen it might be gone.”

“What?” he asked, worried.

“You could die,” she revealed. “Because without the Barrier, and the humans of Gensokyo keeping your existence validated, you have to stick with either age or power, and either, like... way up there to not just... fade away, Forever.”

“Hm,,,”

“You also can’t be sure you’ll still ‘feel’ the same way as you do now,” said the girl.

“‘Feel’, like... You mean my emotions?”

She nodded.

“Why would that...”

He trailed off, He knew why.

“Because your human heart and soul will now be a youkai’s,” she explained what he knew, but had not truly acknowledged. “If you’re lucky you’ll be like Remilia. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be like Yukari. Youkai aren’t... I guess I’d say ‘formless and cruel’ like from the get-go—not anymore, and they haven’t been for a long time... but that doesn’t mean they can’t be.

“Human flesh will appeal to you.

“Terror will appeal to you.

“Violence will appeal to you.”

She stopped, and readied something powerful that both Gen and Hatate listened to closely.

“Youkai are slaves to their instincts, only barely able to move their hands and feet free from binding chains. The powerful do better, but you won’t ever be what you aren’t. Humans are free spirits, youkai are spirits caged.”

“...”

He had no response for that.

“Are you worried now?” she asked him, with surprising sincerity (though without any sympathy).

“... What do you mean worried? Worried how? About what?” he asked, almost defiantly.

“About becoming a monster.”

Hearing that, he attempted to hide that he was shaken, quietly echoing, “‘M-Mons’...”

“Which part?” asked Reim., Hatate watched intently.

“Which... What?” he returned.

“Which are you most afraid of?”

He flinched. “I-I...” he stammered.

But truly, he had to confront this.

I’m already violent... he thought.

I’ve already terrorized others... he thought.

He swallowed.

I...

could I... would I do... that?

Recalling the mansion’s kitchen, at an hour he was not meant to be there...

He’d heard a sound – a sound of humanity – and he’d seen the abode’s color splashed across stone and paper surfaces that should never have been scarlet.

And he paled.

“Tell me straight,” said Reimu, stealing his attention from memory, “okay? I’m listening.”

She was.


[] “... ‘Worried’? No,” he answered. “I find there’s no price too great for knowledge.”

[] “I’m worried, deeply.”

[] “I’m not going to worry about evil if I go, because I love others. I’m sure of it: I’ll stay sane.”

image sources:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3302430
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3894962

++++++++

[X] “I’m worried, deeply.”


“Hm,” was all Reimu gave in return.

He asked, “That’s all?” lifting his head after having lowered it in thought.

“I said I’d listen,” Reimu reminded him, folding her arms, “and I did.”

“But...”

“I got you to admit that you’re bothered by something. Go take it to Patchouli, and maybe your ‘everything’ will get set straight. Whether you still want to become a youkai or not after you talk to her, I don’t care. You deal with it. I already told you, I’m not a therapist...”

She closed her eyes, sighed, and hunched her shoulders. Then, she looked at the bird behind his back, asking, “She gonna take you back home?”

“I thought you didn’t care what happened to me,” he reminded her in a weakened voice.

“I don’t care what happens to outsiders,” said Reimu, turning from him and walking toward her storage shed, “but I do care about my friends.”

“... Huh?” he uttered, but she was already more than halfway to the little building. “...”

“... Do you want to go?” asked the tengu resting against his back.

“Yeah,” he said.

“... Should I carry you?” she asked.

He turned, and started toward the torii gate.

“You’re really insistent. Do you want to kidnap me or something?”

Hatate was startled by this, recoiling as she floated beside his shoulder. “No!” she yelled.

“Why not?” he asked, smirking lightly.

“That’d be an international incident.”

He started down the stairs.

“The nations of SDM and... Tengu-land?” he proposed.

She grumbled, “Don’t make fun of me...” and they were off.

~~

[ ♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=qvZYnyeON0A ]
[Emperor – Falliccia (Kenmochi Hidefumi)]

I’m going to confront Master about it...

That was his thought as he neared the Mansion gates, in early evening light.

I guess I’ll be direct.

Hatate had departed once the Mansion was in sight, having wished him a good night and explained, she just wanted to be sure her subject wouldn’t fall before reaching his home. He did appreciate it.

The youkai guard now spotted and addressed him, rather happily. “Sir Gen! Your lady is hanging around! She said she’d wait for when you want to go to bed!”

The human Gen blushed, avoiding her eyes and wincing. She’s too forward...! he thought, with Suika in mind.

“You can tell her that if I don’t die tonight, I’ll likely be there somewhat soon. An hour? Two?” he told Meiling.

“‘If you don’t die’? Are you planning to bother Lady Patchouli?” Meiling asked with curiosity, turning to open the gates.

“That’s a way of putting it.”

The gates swung open.

“Head inside, Sir Gen!” the girl directed him with an energetic smile and an inviting palm. She added, “Come see me when you’re ready to visit your woman!”

“Right...” he replied as he walked past, looking at the red-haired girl with defeat in his eyes. In honesty, “Suika” was a nice thought, but it wasn’t really the time to have her in mind.

He went through the courtyard, and entered the mansion.

He would keep interactions to a minimum, until his worries were thoroughly addressed.

~~

The now-familiar library.

The scent, the darkness...

The sound of turning pages that told him his Master was there.

“Gen...”

He heard her voice before he could spot her pink-laden form.

“You’re back, hm? Very late. You were pushing it.”

She was, like often, in a small and temporary study a little ways into the room. Walking there, he laid his eyes on Patchouli Knowledge, who was lounging and reading a novel on a scarlet couch. On her stomach was the warming cloth he had created, folded neatly.

“Or will you go out again, to those unknown places you rest in at night lately?” asked the soft-spoken woman, smiling his way teasingly. This embarrassed him a little, but with tension so deeply rooted in his skull and chest, the embarrassment only manifested in the slightest tinge of pink on his cheeks. His expression remained the same: one which suggested a quiet, aching pain, Patchouli closed her book, and lost her smile. “What’s the matter?” she asked him.

“... I’ve become evil, have I?” he asked.

Patchouli stared at him with no change in her eyes.

“... And you’ve made me that way,” he said.

She sat up, her hair swaying gently with the motion. However, she said nothing.

“I’ve started worrying... about quite a few things,” her apprentice explained.

“I have made you nothing other than knowledgeable,” said his Master plainly. “Your nature is yours. With a path laid out before you, you have walked it.” She straightened her back, looking to the back cover of the book in her hands. “The path was dark, but you walked it. You want to see what awaits along it, and at the end.” She met his eyes again, and again was unwavering within those amethyst pools. “The choice to walk that path: that is what makes magicians.”

“You’re saying I always would have turned out how I am now?” That’s what Alice said. But, Reimu told me Master’s... “You really had nothing to do with my growth?” he asked her, directly.

Her gaze lowered to his chest for a few seconds. “I see...” she said, in some confirmation to herself. Making eye contact once more, his Master told him, “I most certainly have tailored you,”

“Hm...” he grunted quietly, in a deliberate non-reaction, but within it felt to him as though lead had suddenly dropped down in his heart.

“I stopped you from veering off the path,” she said.

“... Hm?” he grunted again. He was taken off guard. Recalling what Reimu and even Alice had said, it sounded as if Patchouli had wanted him to experience a twisted fate... But, his Master wasn’t one to lie. Lying was useless to her. “Can you explain that, Master?” he requested.

“Let us elaborate this ‘path’ metaphor,” Patchouli answered. He gave a small nod, readying his mind for lecture.

So she began. “The path is the abyss of knowledge, with an obscure goal and a hundred thousand, several million shadowed hands grasping along the way. We magicians contend with the abyss, seeking the ways to its ‘end’. What lies at the end is, of course – conceivably – the ‘truth’.”

“Yeah,” he accepted. He knew this; an old explanation of any magician’s motivation, repackaged.

“Along the way we discover other truths of the abyss...” said Patchouli, tracing a finger through the air down from over her head, until she could point at the red carpet below her. “The darkness is not lit, but understood... adapted, applied. Our magic springs from the dark, as unknowns become knowns.”

He nodded.

“However it is dark, and blinding, and in the first place what has tempted us is the dark. The ‘end’, which none of us have yet seen.” The witch explained. “Lesser magicians, like the puppeteer in the forest, and the black and white, human witch who lives nearby her, will become satisfied exploring one realm of the abyss, or small portions of it. ‘Truth’ is their goal as ever, but not ‘the’ truth. This is also the trap of reprobates of the truest sense: those who are so enticed by the dark that they are consumed by it. Some taint is inevitable as we venture further... that is ‘evil’, but should you embrace it altogether... Should you plunge headlong to the depths without a proper understanding, then you are consumed... to become a thoughtless demon, beast... a monster, pathetically shaped like our kind.”

“And finally,” she finished, “even aside from these, there are worse.”

“‘Worse’?” he queried. Patchouli lifted her finger back up, stopping before her chest, and she looked at him.

“There are the thoughtful monsters,” she explained. “Monsters like me.”

“Eh—” he uttered, his brow distorting.

“And,” she continued, turning the aim of her hand, “like you wish to be.”

She pointed straight at him.

“... Wha—”

“Though it’s a matter of perspective and opinion,” she interrupted him, dropping both her gaze and hand. “What is worse? Doing whatever you like because you’ve utterly lost your sentient faculties, or doing whatever you like because you are able, and willing? Answer that...” she paused, meeting his eyes again, “and answer your dilemma. However, I know that you want to see the end as well, and that hardly anything will stop or stay your path. And no: if you’re thinking that it’s what you’ve done today that proves it... it does not. Rather, your ‘self’ does.” The magician relaxed her shoulders. “Gen,” she said, “you were always going to walk the path to its end. The abyss entices you as strongly as any magician, and you know that understanding it often means ignoring those who don’t, and would never.”

He grit his teeth with his mouth closed. He narrowed his eyes, and quietly broke his gaze from Patchouli’s: looking past her.

“I know,” said Patchouli, “because none of this really bothers you.”

He flinched.

“... It does! I’m human!” he shouted emphatically. “Being ‘evil’ isn’t what I’m meant to be!”

“I believe I’ve explained before...” the elder magician went on, unfazed, “... that lies, with me, solve nothing.”

“What—!?”

“If only you could hear how it was that you even said that,” she continued, giving a single, dry laugh. “How you emphasized the most damned word says it all. Gen, do you know what ‘evil’ is?”

“... I...”

He was unable to answer. There was conviction in his heart, but reason kept it down.

“Or were you upset,” she asked, “because the word was given to you, and you then realized you’ve forgotten?”

Again, he couldn’t answer.

“You know that the bother of ‘evil’ will only get in the way of discovery. You may even enjoy it: indulging in the dark that you have taken for yourself as you’ve learned. You have fallen like all proper magicians should: naturally, and with little concern. You aren’t so lost that you would resort to being overwhelmed, you are entirely the opposite: you have become so aware, and you have come to ‘know’ your place on this path so well, that you don’t even properly recall life before the dark.”

And Patchouli Knowledge smiled.

“And that,” she said, “is a wonderful thing.”

He wanted reassurance.

He didn’t really want this: this cold take.

... Even if she was right, and he didn’t remember.

He knew ‘evil’ to be wrong, but his view had been distorted. Itou Gen did not understand it anymore, it seemed almost not in the slightest. What was “bad”, really, when all you wanted to do was learn?

... This was as if he’d turned into a youkai somewhen, without having realized it whatsoever.

He still had his tether to old values. That tether told him: his continuing on would mean this link would one day sever, and like his Master before him, he might do near anything in the pursuit of knowledge.

And as she said, as he had realized earlier in the day, the idea of that happening... did not truly upset him.

But there was that.

There was flesh. If he would come to eat human flesh...

That primal, gut-centered revulsion to the idea that he had...

... it made him almost see his old values more clearly.

“I don’t...” he spoke, and Patchouli waited for him to continue, “want it: being a monster, eating people: I don’t want any of it. I don’t want to not be me. I don’t want to be a shadow aware or un-. I want this. What I have! I don’t want to be a... a husk!”

“Then it is good we have an answer,” said Patchouli, “sitting before you right now.”

His emotions lowered. “Master?” he asked, to be sure.

“What do you think?” she asked, clarifying: “Of what you see. Of this Master who you know.”

“... You’re beyond me. A powerful person, who I admire.”

“Gen,” she addressed him, standing up. He straightened his back as she strode toward him, book no longer in hand. She stood almost against him, and looked at him with something rare on her face...

Earnest emotion.

The stern-eyed magician met him close, and from there she told him, “I will not do this often. You know that I won’t.”

She grabbed at his clothing, gripping his vest and looking at his torso. He froze, but listened intently.

“Don’t speak roundabout right now, I will not either. This is something important. It is important, Gen.”

He did not interrupt.

Patchouli spoke with a clarity he couldn’t recall ever before hearing in her voice. She often spoke... distant. Even when he had seen her shouting and impassioned, she had a quality to her tone that always spoke to practice. This was not practice... This was his Master, the magician Patchouli Knowledge, without a guard. Hearing her... he determined that she was speaking to him with what he could only call one thing: the entirely bare honesty of an oni. “Gen,” she called his attention again, and he quickly gave it, finding her eyes which were now finding his. Now, they wavered. “What do you think of me, as a person? Say everything—everything that you think. Tell me, who am I to you? Who am I, to Remilia?” Not ‘Remi’...? “What am I? Speak!” she ordered.

... So he thought, somewhat long before he would answer.

“Patchouli Knowledge...” he said a hefty while later, calling her with no title, “you are a magician with little moral awareness. You enslaved me and wanted at first to use me, a human, for experiments. You work closely with a devil who kidnaps humans. You exhume the dead for magic. You have no qualms, at all, with whatever it is that you do, and you possess one of the most loving hearts I have ever encountered.

“I have seen few people so vastly loyal to their friends: so close that they can be called family. You have the most charming smile I’ve ever seen, and every time I earn it, to witness it makes my love and devotion for you deepen more and more, more than I ever think possible. You can laugh, I have seen you cry; it is plain to me that while many things would not bother you for the sake of magic, you could never truly be so far gone that you would do some of the more reprehensible acts known to humanity, or simply to kin. You limit yourself... and you would never betray anyone, so... If... you are shaping me into you, yourself, or at least guiding me that way... I know why it is that until today I’ve never worried or questioned any part of the path.

“You are evidently evil, but also immeasurably kind... it is very much like Gensokyo itself: a contradiction that lives despite that.

“... And you don’t eat humans, which tells me it is unlikely that I will want to, should I ever turn.”

Patchouli waited a moment, to make sure that he was done.

And then, her lips turned up.

“Look at that,” she said, “I didn’t need to say anything at all.”

“But if you want to reach the ‘truth’, do you think you would really eventually do ANYTHING?” he asked.

“We always think,” she replied, “and that keeps us from being... completely detached, really.”

“Some reassurance...” he commented, “a guarantee of evil, but at least not to anybody I like... and maybe more?”

“Maybe more,” she agreed, with a nod. She was still holding his vest.

He had said that, in a mock dismissive tone... but he was reassured. The worries in his heart and head were simply, near entirely... gone.

“Patchouli...” he said, to indicate he still wished for openness for now. She listened. “Does Sakuya butcher the humans that Flan and Remi have through their tea and cakes?”

Patchouli shook her head. “Do you want to go see for yourself? We’ve caught an outsider again...” she offered.

“I do,” he said, resolutely.

“The process is simple. Syringes are difficult to come by so Sakuya lets their blood instead.”

“She cuts them...?” That surprised him.

Patchouli shook her head. “Bloodletting requires no such thing. It is a very simple and rather safe process. We keep the humans alive, and then set them out after.”

“And then, Meiling...?”

“Meiling hasn’t eaten a single human since she came here, that I know of,” answered Patchouli. “You may ask her yourself. Even if she had, would you stop talking to her?”

“I wouldn’t, I think,” he admitted. “That said, I think I remember you telling me that a youkai, once they’ve eaten human flesh, will endlessly crave for it again.”

“Did I?” she asked. “I would say that they always want that taste again, but not that they’ll necessarily indulge the want, nor will they necessarily have a craving. I don’t recall what I said, however,” she admitted. “Ah!” then she yelped with surprise. “I think I recall! I believe that’s what I said, then—what I’ve just told you now. Gen, shouldn’t you remember everything that I tell you?” she asked him.

“I try...” he gave her that, weakly.

“I remember that I told you Remi is called the ‘Scarlet Devil’ for a reason, but never explained it...” she beckoned him closer, his ear in particular, to her face. She whispered to that ear, “When she bites, she often makes a mess.”

“Ha...!” he chuckled. “So, it’s because—?”

“She becomes covered in Scarlet. She doesn’t kill often, however. Remi is a light eater,” she quietly explained.

She then pulled away, though she was still holding him.

“But she does kill, huh...?”

Patchouli lifted her left hand, pinching at the air to indicate... what she proceeded to demurely mouth at him: very, very rarely.

“I see...”

“But death is still a part of this Mansion,” said Patchouli, dropping her hand and looking at him with a somewhat plain, though oddly sincere face. “We have all killed in this Mansion—though not all the fairies. Flandre, too, has never killed anymore.”

He registered this information. Somehow, he knew Flan hadn’t, even ignoring that she had been previously imprisoned. If anything, her sister may have been trying to prevent her from having blood spilled on her hands...

“And if you kill, Gen?” asked his Master.

“I hope... that I have a damned good reason,” he said.

“If the reason is hunger?” she followed.

“Please make it so I don’t turn out that way, Master,” he begged.

“In the end,” she said, “everything comes down to you. Now, shall we go? Sakuya should be getting ready with the outsider.”

He paused, as he had a thought.

“...”


[] Ask for a hug.

[] ... No! NO! THAT’S EMBARASSING!

>.gif

image sources:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/818988
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1632977

++++++++

[X] Ask for a hug.


Softly, Gen put his hand down on his Master’s wrist. She looked up into her apprentice’s face curiously.

“Lady Patchouli... Master,” he addressed her, “... may we hug?”

... The elder magician’s face relaxed into a pure happiness once she heard his request. She nodded, accepting, and it was so that teacher and student shared a sincere embrace.

“...” Her body’s so adorable. I probably shouldn’t tell her that. His body eased, half his face now pressed into her faux-nightcap hat. Her shampoo.. Hm..

But, Lady Patchouli sure feels weak... He thought this, still feeling Patchouli’s fluffy body through her fluffy clothing. I didn’t notice when we hugged before, since everyone else joined in.

It was a strange feeling: a reminder of the effects dedication to the Art, through this reminder that his Master valued him highly.

He put a little more strength into his hold, and she did as well. He thought, he might not have strength forever, so he wanted to hold her tight. She reciprocated, and he calmed even further to the scent drifting from her hat. A scent, he realized, he knew well now.

He smiled, contented, and against his chest she was smiling too.

[X] “Honor” her.


“...”

Without a word, and with a look of resignation, Gen grabbed his belt as well.

“Gweheh,” his partner chucked from across the way. “Gweheheheheheh...!” She seemed to be truly out of it.

He undid the belt, untucked his shirt, lowered his zipper... and as Suika leaned over the bed with anticipation obvious in her face (having abandoned her stripping), he parted the front of his boxers and granted the oni the honor of seeing her full effect on him.

Her eyes glowed, and her body turned into smoke.

Gen straightened up as the smoke zipped across the room and coalesced before him as his lover, eyes transfixed on his manhood. He looked down at her with his mouth frowning and his brow furrowed, a bothered blush filling his cheeks. “... Weren’t we supposed to fight on the bed?” he asked.

“Hm? Gen,” she looked up past his standing wood and said, “that was just a metaphor. I wanted to play around with you like, sex-stuff! Like that.” She took hold of him abruptly, giving him a jolt. “Come on, boy. That was obvious, right?”

... She’s not joking, of course, he judged while she happily began moving her hand. He gripped at the front of his pants, over his thighs, and watched her.

“You talked with eh... your magic teacher!?” She couldn’t control her volume, beaming at him with her with her eyes shut.

“Yes...”

“So how’d it go?” she asked, smirking at him once more.

“Miss Suika... you want to discuss a serious topic while doing that?” While he asked this, he observed her sniffing at him, and felt his heart tighten. She answered:

“Huh?” She hadn’t been paying attention.

“... It went well.” He gave up once again. “I’d say that’s thanks to you, Miss Suika.”

“Weelll, you didn’t get kicked out so I guess you’re still doing magic yeah?,” she went on, jerking him with a firm hand and closing her eyes in delight once again. “What are the results!? You gonna get corrupted by evil!?”

He slouched. “The only one corrupting me is an oni, not a magician,” said the apprentice.

Suika gave a, “What!?” and let out a small noise as he put his hand down on her head.

“This is supposed to be a fight,” he reminded her. “Let’s go to the battleground.”

She finally let him go and slipped her shirt off her shoulders, grinning brightly as she said, “Great! You’re all excited! Me too, nyaha!” Seeing her chest, he bounced. “Oh!!”

Suika quickly went to unclasp the last few buttons over her stomach. Gen spoke began to undress as well, and addressed her entirely theatrically. “You’ve intruded on my home and changed me terribly,” he said. “You’re right. For all you’ve done, I’ll have to take you down.”

With his robes and scarf off and dropped, he had nearly completely unbuttoned his vest. As he took it off, Suika set about about unchaining herself, and when she saw his hand moving to the collar of his undershirt, she froze and shouted, “AHH!!”

He stopped and lifted an eyebrow.

“Leave it on! I wanna take it off a’ you myself!” she said. This embarrassed him, and naturally he complied. She looked to be embarrassed as well... “Hyaaa~” she exhaled at a high pitch. “We’re gonna be in a room! I-It’s my first time doing something like this, my head’s all crazy...!”

Ah... Is that why she’s so gung ho right now?. He reached down and slipped off his shoes, she dropped her skirt. He hadn’t actually thought about it, with the to-now grander events of the evening still very fresh in his mind. His expression muddled, crossing between nervousness and joy. It’s my first time too... oh, right, she knows that but I should say that...!

She put her thumbs in the band of her bloomers. He froze and gave an, “Ah!”

She stopped and cocked her head.

“Leave those on... Let me take them off of you myself,” he said. Suika’s lips curled up and her eyes narrowed in content and satisfaction.

“Hmmm...? But I wanna tease you though?” she coyly replied. “Could we do both? I’ll start pulling down, and you go the rest of the way...”

“‘Tease’...” he repeated while sliding his pants from his legs—taking his socks and boxers along with them, “aren’t you actually trying to drive me mad?”

“‘Trying’?” she repeated while plucking off her socks. “Nah. I ain’t ‘trying’.” She stood with her hands on her hips, looking him up and down, gratified. He took off his hat and put it down onto her head, increasing her smile. She stepped into the air, then, and drifted to his chest, pressing against him and clinging to his shirt – with her hands, with her sweat. He put his arms around her back, now hearing the sound of his own blood from within. “Gen...” she said his name quietly, warming his skin through the fabric she’d pushed against. “You’re really alright?” she asked.

“...” He couldn’t formulate an answer. His thoughts were a storm of “Suika”. After heating up from her snuggling, nudging, and her huffing of his scent through his clothing, Gen spoke from his heart, telling her: “Let’s talk after I’ve gotten my tongue in you.”

Suika swung her head up, looking into his stoic, flushed face with hers mirroring it in color. “Let’s go to the bed! Right now!” she proposed. Gen lifted his head and hoisted the oni up into the crook of his right arm, holding her under her thighs with his left. He leaned his face to her body and opened his mouth.

“Who gets to start?” he asked while glancing at her and extending his tongue.

Suika gazed down upon him with smug superiority while he began to lick at her chest. She let him at his task for some time before answering, “It’s a fight, yeah? It’s gotta be whoever gets the upper hand...”

He stopped with his cheek over her beating heart, eyeing her with a lowered brow. “... You remember that I can’t use magic today, don’t you Miss Suika? And if it’s purely physical... I can’t beat an oni.”

That oni chuckled. “Too bad, huh?”

He started forward and brought his mouth away from her, keeping his posture up and straight. “Be gentle,” he bid.

She wrapped her arms about his neck and replied, “I’m gonna be rough.”

He stepped onto Meiling’s bed, and once he had both his knees atop the covers, the oni let him go briefly, lifted her hands in a pose for attack, and so attacked him swift. The youkai pushed him down and pinned his arms, spread out, to the bed. This left her grinning over him, obvious and eager. She moved her legs to straddle him, the back of her hips pushing against his now entirely prepared little gentleman. Her hair fell forward and tickled the sides of his face.

Suika said nothing, she only took one hand to his face – gently as she said she would not be – brought it down and began unbuttoning his shirt from the collar, leaning forward as more of his chest was exposed. From there she began to return the favor to him with her tongue for what he’d done a few moments before.

His one hand was thus free. As his partner continued running her tongue along his skin and progressing on unbuttoning his top, he rested that hand against the side of her chest. When the final button was undone, Suika giggled softly and sat up, a line of her spit connecting her tongue and his neck (where she’d last been licking). She put the hand which had just been at work onto his abdomen, and with quiet satisfaction began feeling his stomach, side, and chest. He swallowed. She released his other arm, and with her now-freed hand reached behind herself to grab at him. Gen shook at her touch, and she giggled again.

“Not fair...” the apprentice growled, reaching up to her breast with his freed hand.

Suika laughed more openly. “Feels like you like it, though,” she teased.

And so he set about concentrating on rubbing her sides and chest, while she moved her hand up and down over his lower part. He liked it, most definitely, but the boy was aggravated that he couldn’t do more. Being serviced alone didn’t suit his tastes. He wanted his feelings to be shown in action as well.

As of now, his penis was very happy with the arrangement, but his face was only a lightly constricted mask of frustration. His ears were hot. She was pulling him along as she liked, and all he had available to worth with was her upper body. He thus struggled between wanting to push back, and appreciating her grasp... really appreciating it. She had his hips when she tugged him up. He loved that. He hated it.

He chose to endure. For a few minutes, he shut his eyes and stopped his hands to let Suika do as she pleased. And she was pleased: by his tension, by his shivers, with how his lips eventually parted and his breath began to gently warm and wet her stomach. With those minutes passed, her heart fluttering at how long he’d held back and how stiff he’d gotten, the oni girl bent forward again. She let him go, and lazily bent her arms over him.

Brow furrowed, mouth and nose against his chest, she started moving her pelvis, bumping her backside against him and spreading heat over his lower stomach. Gen grabbed her sides, lifted his head, and pushed his own mouth and nose against his hat she still wore, and – flinching, huffing – he enjoyed how this was somehow less stimulating, and all the same a hundred times more precarious, for his bullied rod. With little thinking, he brought his left hand to her lower back and began to sit up, still letting the oni lean against him. He lowered his right hand, then, to take his member.

With the youkai still slowly bucking against him, and now panting and flinching herself, he pulled himself from under her thigh, making her jolt; he felt for the buttons at the front of her bloomers, and once he’d had them opened, slipped himself in (almost finding the fit, the raw humidity, and the slickened press of her stomach and clit unbearable), took her ass in his hand, and felt her grind and slide against him. All with their eyes shut; the pair of lovers pushed against one another; gripped one another; hugged and clung to one another, and as the smell of their sweat and lust filled the room, their thoughts each faded.

There was no fight. Each half of the pair was simply happy to now have the other. Nuzzling, clutching, and in time holding hands, they eventually could feel each other’s tension about to break, and shortly after they finished just about together, kissing and taking their hands to one another’s hair through the climax and into the calescent afterglow.

“Mg...” with a grunt, Gen opened his eyes a little. “I messed up... your bloomers,” he told her, apologetically, though he was still in the process of messing them up.

“Gh...” Suika grunted as well, breathing heavily now. “... Messed them up myself,” she revealed. Well, he could feel that much. His penis had been drenched in – and was presently being drenched in – something far thinner than his jism. He pulled his hands away from behind Suika’s neck and within her tresses and turned his head. Gen brought his mouth to hers. He pushed Suika (who was still holding him close) down, letting his cock bounce free from her knickers, and he stuck his fingers into her waistband. He slid what he found there around her, and began to push one of his digits in.

She bent, dragged her hands from his hair, and dug her claws into his back. She bit down on his shoulder, as well, and began to whine. Driven, the human continued to go on until he could feel her drool running plentifully down his arm. She pulled off his shirt, and once he’d extracted his arms from the sleeves he grabbed at her bottoms and tugged them off. Forgetting whatever had been worrying him or elating him before, he became entirely spellbound by Ibuki Suika, and acted with no forethought. He lifted her ass with both his hands and, between her soaked and steaming legs, he went down on the oni. He sucked, tongued, and pushed as she screamed and growled underneath him. He grabbed at her ass completely and lost himself to feeling. He stepped back, laid his stomach down to the bed, and parted her thighs, all while keeping his mouth to her crotch, and from there with eyes shut he pleasured her, feeling butterflies in his chest when she grabbed his skull and thread her fingers through his hair.

He’d learned a few spots she liked most already. He knew that when she started calling for him she wanted his thumb on her clitoris, and wanted him to abuse her. She called; he did, and seconds in he got her to climax again: spraying his cheek and releasing a clear stream against his face. He let it fall on his tongue, and soon felt heady. The boy got on his knees and lifted her bottom again.

Before he could go back for more she kicked against the shoulder she hadn’t been biting before, and this instantly knocked him onto his back. She turned over, then, and crawled to his erect penis, opening her mouth wide above him, and – once she knew she had his attention – going down on him in return. She pivoted also (causing him to convulse and flinch), and swung her leg over him, dipping her head lowm choking, and lifting her hips. She glanced back at him. Gen lifted his head, and took her ass and pussy with his hands and mouth again.

Suika... he thought as he spread her lips and teased her other entrance (exit?) with a finger. She bobbed her head up and down, wrapping her tongue around him best that she could. They kept this up for five minutes? Ten minutes? Once she truly started sucking at his member, it wasn’t long before he felt himself cumming up (down?) her throat. He fell back to the bed, her twitching his fell on hi chest. His mind went sheer white as he felt himself popping out of her mouth, and casting ropes over her face. He realized then that he should take his hat off her head before they got any wilder...

And so, after minutes, and minutes, and minutes had passed (and his hat had been put to Meiling’s hat stand with a wiped-off hand), an hour and perhaps on its way to two later, he found himself exhausted and nearly asleep on Suika’s sweat and cum- (of both kinds) slicked stomach, squeezing at her body absently. She pet his hair affectionately, equally exhausted and laying down with her eyes closed.

“It’s so late...” the human groaned.

“Night is the time for youkai...!” Suika’s cry was weak and hollow, but there was an attempt at the enthusiasm those words, from her, implied.

“Should we go bathe and hamper these sheets...?” he proposed.

“Mmg, but... I like this smell...” saying this, Suika held him tight.

“Yeah, but...” he muttered, almost drifting off as he thought I mean, I do too...

He liked the smell now, but if anyone other than Meiling came in here after they’d nodded off, awoken, and snuck off, anyone would notice. It was a bit risky.

Going to bathe was also risky: even if they tried to escape the grounds to wash off somewhere else, they could be caught on the way. This was to be between a rock and a hard place...

Or rather a soft place. Suika’s soft, welcoming belly, begging to be touched and slept upon... Indeed: if he didn’t get up now, he was not going to.


[] Get up, clean up, and bathe.

[] Drift off in Suika’s arms. It’s probably fine: Meiling has your back.

<<= THIS IMAGE IS NSFW though the thumbnail is normal. Also it's a .gif animation
The update is worksafe, btw.

++++++++

[X] Get up, clean up, and bathe.


“Mmf...” he grunted, and put his palm to the bed instead of Suika’s stomach. With another noise of effort, he pushed himself up, escaping her hold. “Okay, get up,” he said. “Let’s not get in trouble.”

“I like trouble,” she replied.

“I’ve already told you, I don’t like trouble’s consequences, oni.” He flicked the tip of her nose as he said this. She didn’t sell the strike. “Up and at ‘em; we probably reek of sex and sweat.”

“It’s great...!”

“Am I going to have to lift you?” he fired back. She finally got up.

The couple took up the sheets and stuffed them in the guard’s hamper after the youkai of the pair had extracted their sweat and other signs of their enjoyment into a small orb, opened the window, and flicked the orb out. Still naked, they stumbled to Meiling’s closet just to make sure there were clean clothes and sheets to replace things after they went off to bathe.

Gen stepped over to his clothes at the door and picked them up, frowning. Wish I could take care of them with magic, he thought, but he’d have to wear them dirty until he was bathed, at which point he would change into the pajamas always left for him in the changing room. He didn’t love the idea of going through the mansion for a bath... but it would be less complicated, and probably less suspicious if he was found.

Gen reminded his love- and sake-drunk lady friend that she couldn’t be caught and so instructed her to either turn small or spread out. Suika decided she would turn small.

“So ya can carry me,” she said, or rather slurred.

“Sure,” he agreed. He then asked her to gather the further evidence from their bodies, to get rid of it all as she’d done with the sheets.

She did, scrutinized the resulting, translucent ball of “sex” in front of her face, grinned and then said, “I’m gonna eat it!”

“No!” he firmly snapped back, and at once he pushed his palm against her forehead, grabbing her wrist as well.

“Aaaaahh...” she sounded, trying to connect mouth and hand.

“Don’t do that, that’s disgusting!”

“Ahahahaha!” she cackled.

“You’re still not letting up...” he noted with strain in his voice.

“I’ll give it up, but you’ve gotta let me at you one more time,” Suika floated a deal, looking at him slyly.

He flatly replied, “Rejected, rejected,” and after managing to pry her arms apart, he bent low and took her lips—looking irritated all the while.

“Nm...” Suika moaned, putting her left hand on his back. She crushed the ball in her right hand, and after its smoke had vanished into nothing from her palm she put that palm also against Gen’s back. He then briefly took his hands from her before putting them back to her body and lifting her up, as he’d warned, all the while unable to stop her from kissing him back.

The oni pecked at his neck, chin, face and lips while he toed through his worn clothes. Throwing her over his shoulder (and briefly shuddering, wincing, due to misjudging the position of her horns and whacking himself in the forehead), he started dressing again. Over his shoulder, Suika kissed at and patted his back. Her head was entirely in the clouds. His was about halfway—keeping just enough sense to reign in his desire to plant a kiss on her bottom and return right back to everything they had just stopped.

He got on his pants, he got on his socks. He took Suika off his shoulder and placed her on the floor so that he could don the clothes of his upper body. When he was done, he picked up her old clothes and stuffed them into his coat.

“Careful,” Suika warned, now sitting on the floor and slouching, “if you smell those you’ll go crazy.”

“Don’t joke about that, it’s a legitimate danger,” he replied. “I have to hide them...” he muttered after. Hopefully nobody catches sight of them before tomorrow morning. The chains and baubles he moved to Meiling’s closet and hid within and behind a pile of weights and exercise equipment. A youkai needs such things? I can get Tai Chi because it’s also spiritual, but... He shook his head.

He turned – crouched before the closet – to the still-sitting Suika. From there he told her, “Let’s go.”

She pointed just above her head. “Wear your hat,” she told him with a smile. Her gaze drifted to the rack where he’d left the article.

“I don’t want to get it dirty...” he grumbled. He needed to wash his hair.

“Put it on,” said his lady as she leaned back on her hands and pushed out her chest. “Your hair’s a right mess, yeah? And if someone sees you without the cover you’ll get in trouble. If someone finds it in here, you’ll get killed ha ha!”

Fair point, he admitted, pinching a lock of his surely tousled hair. Fine.

He retrieved and put on his hat.

He stood, fully-outfitted, in front of the bare Ibuki Suika. “I’m a sweaty, gross, tired mess,” he told her. “Let’s get in the baths before I fall asleep on my feet and befoul this room.”

On cue, Suika belched and, looking away from him, shortly broke wind.

After taking the reality of this in for a second, the apprentice closed his eyes and sighed. “... You’re making this a tradition?” he asked, opening his eyes back up to a narrow glare. He had come to learn: this amused her.

Suika was silent now, but hiding her mouth and still deliberately keeping her eyes from his. From the way her back shook (every second or so, suddenly), he knew she was trying not to let go one of her more powerful peals of laughter. He put a few of his fingers to his temple.

Keeping his mouth still and trying not to acknowledge that she had furthermore amused him, he exhaled. With the tickle threatening the corners of his mouth successfully stifled, he stomped over to the oni, shoved his hand down on her head, and ordered, “Turn small, already.”

“Hey...” she answered, looking up at him and still hiding her mouth, “Hey, your turn,” she said, referring to...

“It won’t ever be ‘my turn’!” he snapped. And, he repeated, “Turn small!”

And she did, mocking him with the comment “You’re so stuffed up, Gen,” and once he felt she’d shrunk, he pinched her left horn and brought her into one of his pockets. “We’re going before you do anything dumber,” he told her.

“Nice stuff in here,” she said.

He replied “Shut up,” and. once his shoes were slipped on, he opened the door.

~~

[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMAAqtw2lLc ]
[Eiko’s Theme - Final Fantasy IX OST (Uematsu Nobuo)]

Making it through Scarlet Devil Mansion was less trouble than he was expecting.

He had to tell a few fairies hello on the way, but none of the estate’s other major residents appeared. He did have to more than once stop himself from laughing at the memory of the noise his unladylike lady friend had made before they left Meiling’s room, so taken aback by her attitude, but that aside the most harrowing part of the trek was the span from that room to the mansion proper. He wouldn’t want anyone to spot him there. At the time, he’d hoped nobody had.

He now sat to his shoulders in the large bath of the Mansion, seated to a wall and watching Suika swim past him some meters ahead.

I wonder if she’s already that comfortable with me, or she’s just an oni so impoliteness and poor decorum become her. As he thought this, he eyed her with something similar to pity. She spotted him, stopped there (bubbling her mouth in the water), then opened wide and with what filled the cavity quickly shot a stream directly between her lover’s eyes. When it struck, he closed those eyes, frowning.

And she snickered, slouching into herself and strongly pleased with the look on his face.

“Remember to keep quiet,” he reminded her, wiping his face with his hand. His voice echoed thoroughly within the room, despite his keeping it at a low volume. “What if someone walks in?”

Putting her thumbs over her brows in... what he imagined was imitation of his face, Suika mouthed Remember to keep quiet, and What if someone walks in?

He pulled down his right eyelid and stuck out his tongue.

She stood in the water and struck a “sexy” pose, one hand on her cocked out hip, and one behind her head. She winked at him.

So Gen turned away from her and kept his laughter within his chest.

He loved this. He honestly felt, in here, constantly elated. It had been nice having her wash his back in a normal place. It had been nice, too, to wash hers. Relaxing as they did now was pleasant as well, he thought. Almost too pleasant. It was easy for him to forget the risks.

He bent his head backward and looked at one of the stools before one of the room’s showerheads. On it lay Suika’s clothes, folded neatly.

He heard the swishing of water nearby and looked to find Suika floating his way, on her back.

“Thinking of something dirty?” she whispered.

“Well,” he said, “literally, but nothing perverted.”

“I kinda wanna do something together in the bath...” she admitted, with secrecy, squinting off toward the ceiling. She blinked as her head stopped against the same wall Gen was sat before.

He put his hand down on her stomach, pouting curiously. She craned her neck to look at it. “No,” he said.

“Like you don’t want to?” she whispered, turning her head and putting her left hand down on the back of his.

“...” he thought before answering. “I would definitely like to do something in a bath, but perhaps not this one,” he said.

She put her free hand down on his backhand, along with what had already been there, and began messing with the human’s fingers quite slowly. “... I’m not too sex... sex, um,” she started. He waited. She looked at him and said, “Sex, uh, brained. Sex-brained. Am I?”

“... Am I?” he asked, looking askance with one eyebrow raised.

“Are we?” she asked, her expression severe.

“... I think we’re healthy,” he asserted, staring out ahead.

Suika brought his hand to her mouth, put his middle three fingers in, and started gnawing absently. He looked her way, expecting her to speak. She did.

“I wanna go on ano’er da’e,” she mumbled.

“Where?” he asked. He was still sorry for having interrupted their so quickly after it started.

“... Mayoiga?” she asked.

“What,” he answered, turning to face her properly.

“Mayoiga?” she repeated. Gen replied:

“Saying it again doesn’t help,” he told her,

“Ish kinda lige where Yugari ribs,” she explained, and after doing so she began to suck his fingers with a bored look on her face.

“Like where. Not where?” he asked, putting his right hand on her belly now that it was free (and still it was tempting).

“Mm,” the oni grunted.

“... Damn you’re good at floating,” he observed.

“Jjjen,” she slurred.

“‘Zen’?” he thought she said. Meanwhile he began drumming a light rhythm below her navel.

She simply nodded. Gen kept up his drumming for a few more seconds, but he then put his hand into the water, reached underneath her, and tickled at the little bump of her coccyx.

She spat over his hand, splayed her legs, and splashed.

“BWPF!”

Good sound, he noted, keeping his face stiff and still moving his fingers.

The squirming, but still floating Suika took one hand (her right) away from his, scooped water into it, and threw it in his face. He was drenched at once.

That was too much, he thought, blowing water away from his nose. She used her power, figured the boy.

Smirking through the flowing stuff all around him, he tickled her side, and then her stomach. She kept on floating undeterred, even after several seconds. “Amazing... It’s like ticking a swim-ring...!” he breathlessly observed.

And Suika grinned, his left hand between her teeth. “Thash ish,” she said, meeting his eye and raising her right hand. She coolly declared, “Yer on.” She poked his open armpit.

“Hh...!” he made a sound, not quite a laugh. Now she let him go, turned over, moved to his front, and from there put her ready and wiggling fingers to his body. “W-Wai...! I don’t want... to la... laugh!” he begged, on the verge of doing just that as her hands crawled over him.

“Shoulda thoughta that before you tested me, boy,” she spoke with dark, but clear enjoyment. He managed to get his fingers under her raised arms and return the attack, however.

“Gaha! Aha!” she guffawed, losing her momentum.

“Hey, hey, stay quiet,” he told her through a smile, unseriously.

“Sh-Shut i... t!” she managed to say, before laughing even more, shutting her armpits down over him, and running her fingers over his sides. “There...!” she shouted.

He pushed his hands through her arms, and pulled her in, hugging her close.

“Can’t get carried away,” he said, smiling and chuckling.

Suika relaxed, soon nuzzling to him close. He felt her smile on his chest.

“...” He squeezed her close. She let him. “... I decided, I’m definitely going to become a magician,” he said.

“You’re already one,” she noted. He took one arm from her back to flick at the side of her head. She laughed toward his stomach. “Alright,” she said, “a magician?”

“A magician, even if I become ‘evil’,” he continued. “I can’t let go of what I want to do, I suppose.”

“... I like that,” she admitted. “Don’t become ‘evil’, though.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, pulling back so that he could see her face, “I’m thinking I won’t.”

Suika, on his lap, nodded proudly. “I’m gonna trust the librarian with ya, then,” she said.

“...” He kept quiet a moment, looking at one of the walls—of a mural showing an old god breaking free of a prison. He had a few words in mind... but chose not to say them. The place and time were a bit too lax for any grander declarations.

“Gen,” Suika said, and he listened, “I love you.”

His eyebrows raised at once. A wave of sharp emotion had run over and through him on hearing those words.

Gen turned to look at the oni sitting in front of him, bringing up his right hand to the hair beside her ear. His face was a bit severe, and his heart was pounding. “... Can we say that?” he asked. “Already? Um... Do you,,,? You really—”

“I do,” she said, honestly. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said it as well without hesitation. Then, quieter, and with a weak and slouching posture, he added. “I do.”

Suika brought her right hand to his cheek, and brought his head up. “I think it’s okay,” she said, “I think so, seri... really. I think so.

“I’m seriously in love with you... I don’t think it’s just fluttery stuff.”

“We said we’d say this later,” he answered. However, he was happy that—

“I feel it now.” Suika brought down her hand and left it above his heart, looking down to it. “... I don’t really care about how long it’s been. I want you to know how I feel. That’s an oni... hm. It’s... an oni maxim: ‘If your heart is right, then you are right’. I won’t lie about it.” She met his eyes again. “I’m gonna believe in you... so don’t let my heart down.”

“You can’t put everything on me,” said Gen. “... I don’t want you to let my heart down either.”

“We won’t let each other down, then.” She took her hand from his chest, and raised her pinky. “Swear it, and the one who breaks the vow will swallow a thousand needles.”

He brought his hand, and pinky, to hers, and he swore it. “The one who lies has to swallow a thousand needles.”

“Easy for me,” Suika said calmly, as they bobbed their now-connected hands.

“Don’t say that,” Gen chastised her, as they bobbed their hands once more.

“Make it ten thousand,” the oni suggested.

“Quiet...” he breathed.

Dropping their hands and hold, the pair of lovers looked above to the ceiling, tying their fingers (all of them) within the water instead.

“... Will we get married?” Gen wondered aloud.

“... You gotta propose to me,” Suika answered.

“You’d say no now. You should. That’s too early,” said the boy.

“I’d say yes,” she asserted, narrowing her eyes in sincere thought, “so you can’t ask me yet.”

“Ha,” he laughed. “... Am I really that much of a catch?”

“I don’t care about ‘catches’,” said Suika. “I love you.”

“Mm.”

“I fell in love with you,” saying this, she lowered her head, let go of his hands, and then lowered her body against his. She hugged him; he put his left arm around her back, and looked down at her head.

“Mm.”

“Mmgg~~!! You’re so cool!” She squeezed his ribs.

He smirked, ignoring the pain. “... Mm.”

Alright...

I don’t mind any of that.

I like it... being honest.

He began to stroke her lower back, resting in the bath and putting his other hand to the submerged floor at his side.

I’m unafraid.

I will learn magic, to the fullest.

I’m the man that she chose.

I’ll keep proving to her why it was that she did.

“I love you, Suika,” he told her again. Suika, at peace, began to nod off... though he shook her awake once he noticed this.

They slept peacefully that night: human and oni, beneath fresh sheets, and within each other’s arms, with a newly discovered comfort they’d been carefully ignoring – for fear of its shape being quite comfort’s opposite – now realized quietly, there, between them.

--End of Chapter 17: Magic--


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[] Roasted soybeans.

[] Ehomaki.

[] A mask.

++++++++

The maxim Suika refers to is a real one. 心正しければ則ち事正し or to make it more obvious 「心」正しければ則ち事正し. It's not actually related to oni, far as I know, but it is about honesty so I nabbed it.

image sources:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2035607
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1631168

[X] Roasted soybeans.
[X] A mask.


He was told that the Shawl of Kagutsuchi was supposedly given a proper burial.

With that tumultuous week finally behind him, he spent the following days much more at ease. The magician’s apprentice studied and was careful with magic. He spent time with his Mistresses, he spoke with his friends, he continued to sneak an oni onto the premises and sleep with her so long as the gatekeeper allowed it.

Today he woke up with his face in that oni’s stomach, where he was finding he especially liked to sleep. She enjoyed hugging any part of him through the night... so it was a good arrangement, as it turns out.

He wiped his drool away from her stomach and sat up, stretching and scratching his own stomach. He was getting used to sleeping with her in a bed, which could prove to be a problem down the line. Wondering what he could possibly do about that, he got up and moved to the bathroom in order to brush his teeth.

It was probably already suspicious how often he wasn’t sleeping in his bedroom... Could I bring her in there instead...? he wondered. Merremia liked to get into his bed, however... That would mean he couldn’t get intimate with Suika, even assuming he could hide her from the morning fairy in the first place.

He returned to the bedroom.

... I’m forgetting something, he thought. He was.

Suika woke up, rubbing her right eye and looking at him through her bleary left. “Morning, Miss Suika,” he said.

“Get back in bed,” she commanded in a groggy voice, although it was past six in the morning. He had been considering heading to the main building and grabbing his clothes. He walked over and sat on the bed instead, letting her grab at the back of his pajamas and tug at him as she tried to get comfortable and return to the world of dreams.

What am I forgetting...? he wondered as Suika moved about like a cat behind him. Something about Master...? But it can’t be serious if I’m not remembering it at once.

Suika pulled him down to the bed by his top and crawled to his side, hugging him and already drooling onto his shirt. He let her, with his arms laying carelessly atop the sheets.

He looked down and examined one of her horns absently with a curious hand.

Whatever he was forgetting, he knew forgetting it was not a smart thing to do. Nonetheless, he had.

Unable to recall, he waited until he was sure Suika was asleep before rubbing her head and tickling her a bit to get her to release him. He went to the main building while surrounded by illusory, light-refracting magic. He swiftly reached his room unnoticed, and opened the door.

“...” Merremia was there: in his bed and hugging his pillow.

As he changed into his outfit from his wardrobe, he thought about his walk through the halls to here... It was worth mentioning: “unnoticed” would imply there were people to notice. The halls were more empty than usual... Something was certainly afoot.

Once he was changed, he stood over his bed and pinched and pulled at Merremia’s cheek, almost clinically. The fairy woke... about halfway. She took his hand, smiled a dazed smile, and brought the fingers against her face. “G’morning, Sir Gen,” she muttered,

“Don’t you have your own bed?” he asked.

“Don’t you have yours?” asked someone who was now behind him. He flinched, and quickly turned his head to see who it was. It was, of course—

“Sakuya!”

The head maid was leaning against frame of his door, folding her arms and looking his way with little expression to note.

“I’m not supposed to warn you about anything, am I? You should have your own sense of danger,” she said. Gen turned back as he heard this, and began prodding at his morning fairy more. She seemed to want to stay in bed, unusually. “I can guess what you’ve been doing, but I suggest you be careful with it,” Sakuya told him.

Finally Merremia sat up and began to stretch, still holding his pillow in an arm. He briefly tried to take it back from her, feeling that doing so would be simple... but ultimately not wanting to upset her. She could have it, for now.

“Anyway we’ll be starting very soon, so I’d like you to hurry up.” Sakuya informed him. “You’re the one most sure about this entire process, so you need to be our guide.”

Guide for what? he thought, and thus realized; he had been speaking with his Master here and there about the separation of seasons, and specifically the most well-known festivity associated with that and named as such. Though it was out of season, and now marked the division of spring and summer, Patchouli Knowledge had three days ago told him: “I want to hold a Setsubun festival in three days.”

... Fuck!

Sakuya smirked at the now fairy-carrying and pale-faced Gen. “Well well,” said his friend, “I hope that she isn’t still here...”

And they both knew who “she” meant.

~~

[♫: https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=4F3_AkxennI ]
[Millennial Fair (feat. Ocabanda) - Year 7 (Chrono Trigger arrange) (insaneintherainmusic)]

Gen was recruited to help the maids with their work, the whole lot of them receiving orders from the librarian in the basement who was spearheading the event. He would often get asked “Is this right?” and “Is this okay?” by messengers sent by his Master, and on occasion his Master herself. Everything seemed copacetic... His Master had clearly, earnestly, paid full attention to his explanations.

But because this was forgotten to Gensokyo – because the oni had all left Gensokyo – every resident of the Mansion, comprised of foreigners and natives alike, was rapt with anticipation for the event. The fairies were almost explosive, Sakuya’s brows were often raised in quiet fascination, his Mistress was ecstatic and prattling on about being the first to revive old traditions here, and even his younger Mistress awaited the coming festivities with gently fluttering wings.

Therefore, it was hard to not feel happy here. It was hard to feel happy as well, however—at least for him. He had not found Suika in Meiling’s bedroom, and he had a strong feeling she had not flown from the premises.

“... We’re about ready?” Sakuya asked him. He and she overlooked several giant bowls of roasted soybeans. The platters of sushi rolls – the ehomaki specific to this event – had already been brought to the yard outside the mansion. He turned his eyes on his fellow human, and on the blue oni mask worn askew on her head. He had a red oni askew on his. Every fairy wore a mask as well. Horns and peculiar colors were donned on all participants, as fashioned by his Master—who seemed to be the most eager of all, and he’d even found her wheezing and muttering quickly in the halls a few minutes before while putting up paper lanterns with the rest of the staff.

Sakuya now quietly revealed to him, “... I’m a bit excited.” She was clearly very excited. As for himself, he now indeed felt the same, and his anxiety had turned into a light nervousness.

... This is going to go terribly, isn’t it? he thought. He and she then heard Patchouli’s voice booming throughout the mansion, cast loud through magic.

“Let us bring a time-honored tradition back to this land of fantasy! The hour has come to heal this wounded land...! Onis out! Good fortune in! Let the Setsubun festival... COMMENCE!”

At once, everything went straight out of hand.

A troupe of fairies behind the two human started hurling beans from boxes at the tall-folks’ backs, screaming happily and pushing them out of the kitchen and into the halls. There they found beans already scattered over the scarlet rugs. Sakuya and Gen looked at one another, sighed and shrugged respectively, took up their own ammunition and began to scatter the tiny tanned legumes just as well at the shadows of flying and fleeing fae.

The actual intent of Setsubun was, of course, to have only a few play the “oni” role and be chased away with beans. Because his Master had gone overboard with producing masks, however... the role had lost all meaning and quite instantly the festivities became indistinguishable from a food fight. Rather: this was a food war. The mansion became a giggling battleground of beans and screaming “oni”. From the first to final floor, in the basement and in the library (until Patchouli barred entrance)—out into the gardens, and to the sitting area where Remilia had barricaded herself with her sister and best friend, munching quite angrily on sushi rolls while Patchouli directed the madness and Flandre watched it with glee.

Over time, Gen – recalling what fun he’d had in his old home – took up a contingent of maids against Meiling, who had managed to do the same against him, and the two fought for control of the Mansion itself, rather losing the plot. The head maid bowed out at noon, realizing that there was going to be hell in sorting this all out once it was over. She’d also learned that her two mistresses had discovered that the beans stung them to the touch, and decided to stalwartly defend the sitting area from Meiling and Gen’s expansion and approach. The blood-sucking oni were ever oni still.

And now, the human general neared that area to report to his Master through the seven-color barricade which she had erected.

“We got Mistress Remilia’s bedroom and now we’re trying to get Sakuya’s. We’ve nearly taken the top floor!” he told her this, beaming. Behind him, an outright spell card of beans had been launched against a group of Meiling-aligned maids, and yells of joy rang out. On the roof, a crow observed the proceedings with a bead of sweat crawling down her cheek, her body otherwise still and her camera unmoving in her hands.

“Good work,” Patchouli told him as Remilia glared at the two from her chair and Flandre cackled.

“Miss Meiling has the basement right now, but we’re gonna get the Library, too!” he vowed, putting a fist against his chest. An explosion rang out behind him.

His Master crossed her fingers in an X before her chest. “No,” she said, “that’s off limits.”

“Breaking through the wards Master placed on the doorway...” he whispered conspiratorially, squinting off toward the Mansion walls and rubbing his chin.

“Stop that.”

He smirked at his Master. He’d heard her. However, he would try: he was just having too much fun.

[♫: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch?v=jhx26PZpIy4 ]
[Jesters of Swing [Jesters of the Moon - Electro Swing Remix] - Final Fantasy IX Remix (remem95)]

So much fun, in fact, that he had forgotten one major element of chaos.

[X] Wreak havoc below. Let's uproot this whole shindig!


[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWhzsqGudpk ]
[Hunter’s Chance (Final Fantasy IX - Hunter`s Chance) - The Black Mages II: The Skies Above (The Black Mages)]

The basement was ripe with fog of bean.

The stone halls of the mansion basement had been thoroughly ravaged by combat and legumes. Fae maids of distinct factions were fighting toward the library door. Those who stood with the Apprentice had secured the Younger Mistress’s room. Those who stood with the Guard were gaining a foothold. If you were overwhelmed by beans and driven down or forced to withdraw, the territory you maintained became the enemy’s. Elsewhere in the mansion bean battle ensued as viciously as here. The cleaning would be a nightmarish task, to be sure.

The morning fairy, Merremia, ever-loyal to her master Gen was currently down in these roasted trenches. She lit the area and blinded the opposing forces. She was sure: they would win this, and her master’s “home” base. And then... And then... something, probably. There was a prize at the end, right? There definitely had to be.

As she and her unit pushed again for the door, just as the Guard’s fairies did the same, the morning fairy’s mind wandered to daydreams of lemon and strawberry cake. It was the gravest of mistakes for a vanguard. Had her mind not wandered, she may have been the first to spot Ibuki no Suika manifesting before the archives’ doors, in a storm of Self.

Suika took form, masked appropriately, and recognized by none. The skirted demon gave every fairy but the daydreaming Merremia pause. The morning fairy stumbled down in front of the – to-her unknown – latest oni, her mask nearly falling from her head. She got onto her knees, and looked into the mask of the horned-being before her. Certainly, it was someone unknown, but another certainty was this: it was youkai.

And it spoke one word. “Yo...”

“Eep—...” squealed Merremia.

Behind her mask, Suika grinned. “Looks like yer an oni,” said the elder youkai, bringing forward her masu box. “Oni’s’ve gotta...”

She plucked a bean from the cup, holding it betwixt thumb and forefinger... and aiming it at the now-standing and now-trembling Merremia’s chest.

Thus, she said, “... GET OUT!!”

She flicked the legume. It met the fairies chest; the fairy met the squadron of fairies behind her; the squadron met the far wall, all in a few seconds, and with tossed dust, winds, and bean debris.

Ibuki no Suika snickered. She then took a wide grasp to her first box of beans (she had in fact, carted out several). Gripping, she grinned and felt herself trembling with excitement—her skin tingling against the burned plant life in her hand. So she roared—

“ALRIGHT...! Leeet’s... GOOOOOOOO!!!!”

Her voice...

... in all its raw power and vigor...

... shook the walls, grounds, and the surrounding trees. It rippled the lake. So, Scarlet Devil Mansion knew:

A real oni had come.

Ibuki Suika, with as much show and splendor as she could muster, scattered her soybeans, and as danmaku they struck all fae on either of her sides. Suika began hopping from floor, to wall, to wall, to roof in pursuit of fleeing and fighting fair folk.

“Mayday!” one cried.

“It’s September!” cried another.

“THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT! I MEANT IT’S AN EMERGENC—” As the maid attempted to clarify, Suika beaned her in the cheek. This knocked her unconscious on impact

“AAAAH!” cried the one she was talking to. “IT’S AN EMERGENCE!

“I know that word!” one shouted enthusiastically from down the hall.

Suika stopped and sighed heavily.

“Man, fairies don’t know when to pipe down and just scream,” said Suika, gathering all the fallen and still-whole beans from the hall. They amassed around her in a tanned cloud.

“W-We can’t...” one said, looking up at her through a childish mask.

“Hahn?” Suika grunted, tilting her head.

“We can’t... do both those things at once... p-p-pipe down and...” the shaking fairy explained from her place on the floor.

“Ah.” She was right, and Suika paused. “Aaahh, yeah, haha! I guess you’re right...!” She rocked with drunken laughter, and then suddenly bent toward the fallen and nearly fainted fairy, telling her, “Then, SCREAM!”

And the fairies did scream.

As they hollered, the ancient oni cast waves of legumes, impossible to dodge, through the hall to sweep up any stragglers. She then dispersed herself and swirled in a mass of youkai and soybean, flooding up the staircase and bursting onto the ground floor.

“BPFWHA-WHAT!?”

“Beans!? Smoke!?”

“Mayday! Mayday!!”

“What the heck are you saying!? It’s September!”

Fairies really never get old... Suika remarked to herself as most of the maids she came across fled in terror, speaking nonsensically. A blond in the area, however, ran toward her mass. Oh...?

The golden-haired fairy maid faced her with a masu cup and a green-faced, large-fanged mask. “Steady, troops...! We’ve fought fogs before...!” There were five other fairies behind her.

“No we haven’t!” one said. Suika chuckled to herself.

“N-No, like...! With the drunk thing! The party thing!” said the blond with insistence, turning to the one who’d disagreed.

“That wasn’t us, that was Sensor Battalion V,” said one at her left.

“You’re a dumby, Livy,” said one at her right.

“GIVE ME A BREAK! I’M IN CHARGE AND I SAY WE’VE FOUGHT FOGS BEFORE, OKAY!?” the blond vanguard shouted.

Yeah...!! she thought as mist bled from her body. If they wanna stop me then they’ve gotta come and get me...!

With this in mind, she let an old and once-forgotten power loose, violet and immense. The fae quailed at her presence, and there she knew: the mansion had become hers.

~~

[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnNqNWNLe0 ]
[The Evil Mist’s Rebirth - Final Fantasy IX OST (Uematsu Nobuo)]

“Gen, you look somewhat tense.”

His Master judged him correctly. He was, in fact, concerned.

As evening set in and the moon began to show, faded, in the sky, he realized that his communication line with the inside of the Mansion had become lost. Itou Gen eyed the red building warily. His feeling was... the party may have turned.

He had been teasing and chatting with his Mistresses and Master for long enough to not notice this at all. When the others were preoccupied, he asked Sakuya in confidence to go to the guard tower and ask if their guard had the same concerns for her team. The maid had yet to return, but with her control over time she could at least come and go easily without notice.

“... I suspect someone else is in the mansion, or there is a force of some kind...” the Apprentice admitted to his Master. Remilia looked up from her (bean-free) ehomaki.

“Is that true, Gen!?” said the elder vampire, seated at a small table with his Master. He nodded. His suspicions at the least were true enough. “... Where’s Sakuya?”

“Meiling’s forces have also broken the line of communication... she says,” said Sakuya, a little exasperated from having to use the childish terms of her two adult colleagues. Nobody had seen her arrive, but none were surprised by her appearance beside the Mistress.

“On top of this event being a joyless aggravation, we have UNWELCOME GUESTS!?” Remilia roared, slamming down her fist-holding-roll to the table where she sat. Rice spilled. Sakuya watched the grains fall and sighed as they did. What was a little more mess after all made thus far?

“It’s an event to drive out those unwelcome. This might be a very fitting way to end it,” chimed in his Master, bluntly, as she reached out and plucked up a single piece of rice that had dropped before her friend. She tossed it into her mouth and looked at the two humans as she chewed it. She swallowed and – as she reached for another grain – said, “Part of your work is stopping such guests too, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” Remilia supported the magician’s statement. She pointed at Sakuya and Gen. “Sakuya! Gen! Get Meiling and investigate the mansion! Patche, you’ll protect me and Flan, right!?”

Patchouli nodded. Flandre glanced behind herself from where she was sat on the grass, her wings waving just slightly.

Sakuya and Gen bowed. “Yes, Mistress,” they said in unison, and they took off, for the gate.

Night was coming on quickly. The Mansion and its grounds, which were usually noisy come evening, were now so quiet as to hear the forests surrounding them. This was never before, and they had been noisier than usual all day, at that... It rather unnerved him as they flew, thinking how suddenly it had all ended.

“This is... Marisa, most likely,” Sakuya noted, looking his way. He nodded.

“Reimu may be along for the ride, then,” he replied.

“Is it perhaps your...? Right? The o—... Suika, was it?” Sakuya asked.

Gen considered it. He then realized he hadn’t considered her presence much, if at all, since the morning. Really... In fact... the likelihood that it was her sowing chaos was astronomically high...

... So, he nodded again.

“She is friendly with Reimu and Marisa as well,” Sakuya reminded him. “With any luck this will all be fun and games, Gen, but let’s not be... lax. We are all still new arrivals to this place... Some consider us unwelcome to the land itself.”

Once more, he nodded. He felt bolder, and more assured. He was glad how easily Sakuya’s confidence was conveyed, and resonated.

With that, they soon stopped before the guardhouse.

“Come out,” Sakuya ordered the youkai inside clearly after landing. A scramble was heard, and shortly the redhead swung open the door, closed it behind her, and in a fluster looked at her coworkers. She read their faces, and hers grew severe.

“It’s serious..!?” she asked.

“Assume so,” Sakuya answered, standing with her arms folded. Gen looked back to the mansion.

“It may be my... may be Suika,” he said.

“Or Miss Marisa, surely,” said Meiling.

He nodded, and returned his eyes to her. “Let’s go, then?” he asked,

“Stay apart, but together,” Sakuya commanded, lifting into the air. Her companions took either side of her, a few arms distant. She looked them over, nodded, and turned around. “Take note of any fairies along the way,” said the head maid, and at point she took right off, followed by youkai and apprentice.

~~

When they arrived, inside they found fairies dotting the shadowed ground. The lights along the walls and above from the chandelier were out, and all the hired maids were unconscious: viciously beaned down.

There was also a fog in the mansion... one unmistakable, and which they all recognized. Observing how it lingered in their halls, Sakuya said what they all thought: “The oni.”

“Miss... Sakuya...” a conscious fae spoke up weakly from the child bodies lying all about. As they recognized the mist, they all recognized the tough Livy’s voice—ragged though it had become. Sakuya took a knee as the maid limped toward her, after having crawled out from under one of her friends. “Was a... big... big deer...” the fairy informed her boss, nearly falling after doing so.

“‘Deer’?” Meiling repeated, crouching next to Livy and patting her head, steadying her by her shoulder.

“More likely ‘beer’,” said Gen, as he gazed up the staircase to the next floor. The place was a mess. He saw the faint purple smoke of his lover gliding over the steps. With that witnessed, he frowned.

“Have a rest, Livy,” said Sakuya, standing. Meiling stayed low, rubbing the fairy maid’s head. “See the Mistress. Before you go, however: might you tell us where this deer went?”

“E-Everywhere... spooky deer... I think I fought it before... smoke deer...” said Livy. Gen nodded.

“She helped me round up Sensor Battalion V when I was trying to find the cause of the past Incident,” he explained. “Shimmer, Panora, Lev...”

“Then it’s confirmed. How vexing...” Sakuya quietly hissed as Meiling stood as well and let Livy take her leave.

“I... I’m a little excited...” Meiling admitted. She was twisting her fingers together and wearing a lightly-twisting smile, as well. The humans regarded the battle-hungry youkai dully.

Gen remarked, “... Well, I guess you sh—”

[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VYhvEQclBA ]
[Grand Cross (Final Fantasy IX - The Final Battle) - The Black Mages III: Darkness and Starlight (The Black Mages)]

“You SHOULD be, O newest blood of Gensokyo...!”

It’s her...! thought Gen, and, her voice was echoing all around them.

Sakuya drew her knives. Gen and Meiling parted from her and readied what they needed as well.

“Oi, oi, oi... that ain’t in the spirit of things now, is it? You. You don’t need these...”

With that, Sakuya flinched and stood in awe as a flurry of knives slipped from her clothing, spun for an instant, became clouds of white, and vanished there.

“And you... cute human... this is no festival of magic, is it!?”

Gen stiffened as his tomes were loosened from his belt and whisked up the staircase with blinding speed.

“I can’t take your hands, Noble Youkai. Here, have a cup! Have a cup! Have a cup~!”

In front of each defender, starting with Meiling, a box of burned beans “became” in the air just before their chests. They each caught their boxes, with varied degrees of finesse.

“You see I’m reeeeaaaally disappointed in all of you...” Suika said. “I come back after ages pass and this is the welcome I get...!?”

And there, the room began to tremble.

“Hey! Cute one!”

Ignoring that this was making him... terribly worried, Gen turned his eyes from the shaking walls and answered, “Yes?”

“Where’s the soft one!? The sharp bats!?”

“... They’re outside,” he told her.

“Ahhh... nice then, nice nice... I mean... it was her, right...?”

And there, the trembling ceased.

“If you want to play at Setsubun, you need oni! AND IF YOU DON’T WANT ONI, I WANNA SHOW YOU BASTARDS WHAT FOR!!!”

They each became ready once again

[X] He would defend her.


~~

“YOU...” was what his Mistress said upon seeing the youkai hanging from her gatekeeper’s hand. The youthful, old vampire had her arms crossed—her legs crossed. Her eyes were narrowed, and she, too, was cross. Suika looked up at her, irritated as well. “And what are you looking bothered for?” the vampire demanded to know. “YOU came HERE. RUDELY, I might add! And you caused me havoc—I don’t even want to look inside the mansion! Hmph!” Remilia turned her head and shut her eyes, her brow twitching a few times within a few seconds. She soon opened her eyes on the oni again, and asked her, “Well? Have you got anything to say for yourself?”

“I’ve got a lot to say...” Suika answered swiftly, grinning with her eyes shut. “Like, ‘what’s a kid doing talking to me like this?’ and ‘what’s this brat know about respect? Looks like nothing, huh...’”

“What?” Remilia hissed, glaring once more. Her male servant grew a bit anxious. His lover went on—

“You didn’t do a greeting. Greeting. You didn’t greet me, you just told me to get out...! You’ve got a lotta nerve, you brat!” as Suika angrily spoke, Gen raised his eyebrows.

To his surprise, in a quick motion Remilia uncrossed her arms and slammed a fist down on the table beside her, leaning toward the hanging oni with her fangs bared. “I didn’t organize this event!” she shouted, and then she pointed at her magician friend. “It was Patche!” the vampire spat. “Paaaa-tche! Pa-tchou-li Know-le-dge.”

“You allowed it, Remi,” Patchouli reminded her as she took tea.

Remilia closed her hand into a fist again, bringing it to her chest as she turned and declared: “Because you’re my friend, Patche!”

“Huh?” uttered Suika. She tilted her head, and her brow lowered in confusion.

Gen straightened his back, put his hands behind it, and interrupted, saying, “I think Sui—... Miss Ibuki may have been upset, Mistress, because she was under the impression that you had organized the event...”

Remilia slouched, looking at him and reading his face. He looked away. His Mistress then said, “... We’ve clearly established that, Gen.”

He brought out his chest further and continued to look off at dark clouds in the sky. “A-Aaahh... Of course! Well, I think that, Miss Suik—I-Ibuki perhaps wanted to you to have fun yourself, Mistress. You and Mistress Flandre...”

“Why do you say that?”

“Uh—Uhmm...” Why? What sounds convinci—Ah! He looked at his Mistress. “She said something to that effect.”

“Did she?” Remilia asked, doubtful.

And Sakuya chimed in saying “Well—” and drawing the group’s attention “—she did say something... like that.” The maid met eyes with the gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper flinched. She widened her eyes for a second before slightly narrowing them, and subtly nodding once.

“I thought she wanted to make a game of it, Mistress,” said Meiling. “We were only allowed to subdue her through a challenge, and she wanted to come after the three of you, since you weren’t participating...”

“If I don’t wish to play then I don’t,” Remilia said flatly, looking at the oni and folding her arms again. “The roasted soybeans burn my and my younger sister’s skin—it’s a rather bothersome holid—”

“GAH!!” Meiling yelled, stopping her Mistress before the final syllable. Light befuddlement stirred the group, and they turned their eyes to see that Suika had grabbed the other youkai’s wrist and was jamming her thumb into its underside. The guard let her go, and Suika landed fine: her eyes closed and her stance low.

“What are you doing?” Remilia asked, ignoring the guard waving out her hand wildly and hissing, “aiyaaaa”. Suika stood up, and met eyes with the other child-sized youkai.

“Has the littler vampire at least had fun?” Suika asked her.

“Flan?” Remilia redirected the query, glancing back at her still-sitting sister.

Gen saw his younger Mistress turn slightly and offer a glance at the little trial occurring behind her. With this given, she returned to watching the perimeter wall. “It was fun,” the blond lightly replied, “to watch.”

“Hm. She had fun watching,” said Remilia. The vampire turned her blood-eyes down on her elder. “I can’t say I shared the pleasure.”

Her elder began processing this, never breaking their eye contact, As they stared in silence, her manservant spoke up once more.

“She didn’t do anything too bad, I think, Mistress,” he said, somewhat quickly, “so, I mean, she can—fix everything—pr-probably! She can... fix it, all, so...”

“Gen,” said his Master, and he flinched and shut up. Remilia coolly looked to her magician friend, and Gen looked with a shaking, hesitant glance. Then, Patchouli asked him plainly, “Did you form some bond with this on—”

But the oni interrupted.

“I AIN’T ACCEPTING IT!” yelled Ibuki no Suika, the air vibrating around them from her voice. Remilia remained firm, only increasing the sharpness of her glare. The oni said, “I can settle my beef with your pillow there later but...”

Patchouli? Remilia thought, cocking her eyebrow briefly. In the next second, the ancient youkai pointed straight at her.

“You,” said the oni, her voice fierce and clear. Her eyes, too, were fierce. The Scarlet Devil recognized them: the eyes of one looking to challenge her. “I ain’t accepting that you just had to sit around and have a bad time!” she continued. “I ain’t gonna accept that, y’hear!?”

Remilia narrowed her eyes. “What on earth are you saying?” she asked. Then, in her native tongue she proposed, “Can you speak Japanese? English?”

Gen answered, also in English, “Japanese...” Out the corner of her eye, Remilia caught Patchouli’s frown.

“Hey... Vampire...” spoke Suika again her head now lowered and her voice somewhat. Remilia turned er eyes and gave the elder attention. “You said next time we fought you’d beat me...” A moment passed, and the oni raised her head to ask, “Is fourteen days enough?”

The hairs over her body rose, and in a rare moment: she felt her heart beat. That defiance... That vigor...! It made her blood quicken. She clawed the table beside her without thinking, and she bared her fangs once again as she boldly declared, “Anytime! Anywhere!”

Suika grinned, and whispered, “Great...”

Remilia heard her manservant say, “Wai—... Suika—” but his protest was too late. Suika leapt backward quite suddenly, a gust tossing up around her, and when she landed it was atop the roof of Remilia’s mansion. Under the moon, the oni held her arms out and her hands open. Remilia looked upon her with defiance.

“Great, great, GREAT, GREAT!!! REMILIA!!!” her enemy roared. Sitting forward, Remilia grit her teeth.

“What are you thinking!?” she shouted back in response. Even from here, from the moonlight she could see the oni’s brilliant smile.

“Come on, VAMPAIYA! Blood-sucking ONI, yeah!? You said that, right!? THEN SHOW ME, SHOW ME!”

The oni clenched her fist, and Remilia stood. Around her, her followers and friends grew tense.

In a quick, upward strike, Suika beat against the sky. “LET’S END THIS THING WITH A BANG!!” she said, and the sky—no—the moon...

>.gif

++++++++

[X] Secure the perimeter with Sakuya. If Reimu gets through there could be hell to pay.


“The Mistress said what she said though,” he ultimately decided, looking back to Sakuya. With a firm nod this time, he told her, “Let’s get to the outer walls.”

He glanced back his lover’s way once more.

He muttered to himself, “... I hope this is for show,” and left with his friend.

To the Mistress herself, at least, it seemed anything but.

~~

[♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiNT4ypkmCU ]
[ネクロファンタジア ～ Remix - Il Mondo dove e finito il Tempo (The Demetori)]

The chaotic roars of devils—

Had the moon’s destruction not summoned the attention of Gensokyo, the sounds of their fighting would.

The skin on Remilia’s hand rippled, burned, and tore, blood flying from out from its back. Her latest summoned spear held too much energy for herself. She glared at it—the crimson magic she had manifested curling and molding into a fierce shape. She grit her teeth.

“Don’t finish yourself off before you can have a go at me,” the oni apart from her mocked.

“Quiet,” she commanded, and in defiance, the oni laughed. The vampire flew forth.

She sure puts out a lot... thought Remilia as she went at Ibuki no Suika. Between the two of them, the roof of the mansion had become engulfed in red and white—with each caster having a preference for simple and small bullets. Lights were strewn and casting without relent, bright and intense as if a new festival had begun. Remilia met the oni, and let loose her spear.

“You’re just dropping it!?” shouted Ibuki no Suika. Indeed, Remilia had. She had let it loose from her hand, with a turn, allowing the staff to prop itself up within a crevice. She fell through a sheet of bullets, and with a head turn toward that sheet the oni was briefly blinded. She was then promptly tackled, eliciting an “OOH!?”

Remilia dug her claws into the oni’s back. With a shirt and stomach against her face, she held strong and planted her feet. The other girl then suddenly slammed her hands around the younger youkai’s waist: a hold in return, and the clasp beat the sky.

“Gggghh...!!” Remilia groaned in struggle. She kept her hold. She could feel the oni’s bones beneath her skin.

“Not... just... yet!” said Ibuki no Suika in reply. She brought back her left foot, and held fast to the ground.

And Remilia felt herself being lifted.

!?

With shock, she put back her left foot as well, and fought against the grappling.

“Yeah... this is more like it...” the oni whispered.

And Remilia uttered, “I... told you... to...”

Once more she summoned her strength, and as she unfurled her wings gave a shout:

“—be QUIET!”

“Nwha!?”

With that sound, Ibuki no Suika let the vampire go as her arms were forced aside. The vampire’s wings had gone out to their full, dark span: over twice the size of the vampire herself, and almost shielding the sky.

“Oooh...!” the oni breathed impressed. Furthermore bullets had cleared with the wings’ motion. Plainly, she found them incredible. Remilia beat those wings once, and the two demons took flight.

Under bits of moon- and sun-light, she soared. Ibuki no Suika covered her own eyes and reached for the vampire’s face. Remilia promptly released her, pulled the guarding limb away and grabbed the oni’s face instead.

“FWHM!?” the elder youkai grunted. Remilia forced her hand forward, and made the oni lateral. Snarling once again, she forced them to plummet, dragging the demon down to the roof in a meteoric fall.

Suika grasped her arm and tore through her sleeve. Below, her spear of Gungnir stood as a pillar:

as a pike.

Now...!

Remilia tore her arm back, out of the oni’s grasp in a rush of spilt blood as her flesh was rent—her color and cloth dancing between them like the petals of a flower destroyed by a bullet. She stabbed her fingers into her enemy’s stomach, and with her undamaged arm slammed her left palm once more against the oni’s face. With perhaps two dozen meters left, and the sky screaming around them, the vampire laid the oni out over her knee and aimed for the spear.

They dropped. They met, and behind her hand her enemy screamed from the feeling of a stricken back and a removed side: removed utterly by a violent spire of red magic. A shockwave went out then, stopping a pair of two-colored humans in their path toward the epicenter of destruction.

~~

Gen and Sakuya nearly tumbled from the sky. A wave of scarlet had rushed past them, and turning they saw their Mistress had dealt a massive blow to the intruder.

Gen’s eyes widened, and he moved.

“Gen!”

The head maid arrested his attention. He turned to her with a panicked stare and a pale face. Sternly, she told him: “They’re coming.”

He looked to the east.

Red and white, black and white, were flying toward them over the Lake.

He grit his teeth and felt his heart twist.

“Remember who this is for!” Sakuya told him powerfully. He met her eyes again: their sincere and cold intensity.

For Mistress Remilia... he recalled. For Mistress Flandre, for the fairy maids, for my family in the Mansion...

He watched once more the exterminators’ approach.

The Incident has to be resolved by us. By our Lady.

I have to put my faith in her.

Thinking... that was a supremely easy thing for him to do.

With his heart no longer wavering, he unlatched a book of magic from his belt.

And they arrived.

“Gen...” uttered Reimu, her gohei drawn and go-shintai – the yin-yang orbs – in flight behind her.

“Sakuya,” said Marisa, eyeing the maid and thumbing the mini-Hakkero in her hand. She gripped her broom as the two of them came to a stop, and after a moment of looking at the defenders... she grinned brilliantly. “You guys are getting up to somethin’ really crazy tonight, huh?”

“Well, I’m not sure we can call this ‘night’ anymore...” Reimu added. She sighed. She laughed, and then glared at her fellow and foe humans. There she quietly asked them, “You guys... you know what you just did, right?”

“I regret to inform you that the moon’s fall isn’t our doing,” Sakuya replied, drawing her knives and entering a stance. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”

“Of course I don’t!” Reimu snapped. “It happened over your mansion!”

“It is because this happened over our mansion that we will see to it,” answered Sakuya. She raised her blades and commanded the shrine maiden and her companion: “Leave.”

“The heck we will,” Marisa answered in Reimu’s stead.

Reimu followed, “Right.” Both became ready.

“Sorry girls,” Gen apologized to the children, the book in his palm now opened to his first-intended spell. He told them sternly, “I’m not letting you reach Mistress Remilia.”

“‘Cause you know I’ve already had enough of her...? I guess you’re right,” said Reimu, forming a grin as well. “I’m not gonna listen, to whatever she says.”

“We all know how this works,” he answered. He and his friend readied themselves fully. Finally, he said to the pair: “Come on, then.”

Between the four, light and sound rang out at once.

~~

A fist collided with Remilia’s jaw, and for a moment she could feel her own eyes jostle. She held to the limb, and bit her teeth down on the knuckles. An oni dusted in shingles and splinters and residual stone got up from a crater in the mansion roof, darkness pouring from her abdomen and pooling a bitter crimson around her feet. Under the twisted moonlight, even Remilia shivered to see the cracked shadows cast by her eldritch horns, and the blackened expression of her face.

The red light of her spear dissipated. Without a second thought, she dispersed herself in a cloud of vampiric bats. A mist exploded over the rooftop. Clouds and wings stormed together, and coalesced into demons’ shapes under the broken moon: a fist under the oni’s chin; a fist in the vampire’s stomach.

The oni winced. The vampire coughed blood.

D... Damn it...! she thought. With red oozing off her tongue and from the arm she hand under Suika’s chin. She decided too to cast red magic—shouting indeed for just that with what remained of her voice: “RED MAGIC!!”

They separated with a screen of scarlet between them. A vortex of red was unleashed and each recovered—Suika finding it difficult to steer away from larger concentrations of violet magic the vampire had thrown in. Her side was still open; her face was still obscured.

Each youkai landed again to the roof, and between them a ray of prismatic energy shot out with an overpowering hum. They looked to the East: the exterminators had arrived.

“Reimu, huh...” grunted the oni.

“Reimu... Marisa...” whispered Remilia. The light died between them. Their eyes met again, and they rushed.

The chains and their baubles quickly interfered while Remilia flew around the wounded oni. She could now plant her fist more easily, and plant her foot into that rebellious face more easily, but it drove her to awareness. Her advantage could cost her more than she earned. So with caution she approached, and the elder youkai was evidently disappointed with that motion.

In a flash, she caught Remilia’s ankle when it was near, moving her hand away from her wound to do so.

“Hwha!” uttered the vampire, and she was thrown a ways away. She turned over quickly, expanding her wings to balance herself and land with grace. A chain flew out then, shining far too brightly, and it severed her right thigh in two, leaving burning flesh behind and the right leg of her undergarment falling.

!?

She quickly dropped her body to connect the stump with the severed limb. Growling, she urged the tissue to mend, and above, in midair, found Ibuki no Suika with her fist raised.

~~

He hadn’t fought with Reimu at all in the time since their first sparring.

While he had her in his sights, Sakuya dealt with his blond and child senior in magic. Mercifully, the duel adhered to the rules of the land due to Sakuya’s presence. Unfortunately, without being able to trick the fool... Reimu proved again to be inhumanly proficient.

Don’t I have a single card that can foul her up...!? Even a single pattern...?

Rainbow light and red beside white marked their engagement over the walls of Scarlet Devil Mansion, with the shine of metal plentiful and brilliant as well. Reimu seemed invincible to him. Marisa was fairing worse with Sakuya, however.

A close glint of a knife – likely deliberately placed – took him from his anxious thoughts. He gave a quick shake of his head and thought this instead: it didn’t matter if he could win, what mattered would be if he could be a proper guard. At least, stall until the Mistress was done.

He slipped away from Reimu’s seals once again, and her turn was up. A card slipped out his sleeve, and he made its incantation as his tome of Water Sign spells shined.

“Water Sign,” he finally said “‘Midgard Serpent! Release Your Tail!’”

A whirlpool in the air—

As it was summoned around his target, he saw that target slice through reality with her rod and he gasped, utterly stunned.

“Wha—”

She appeared behind him, slipping out from a lavender gap bound with two seals. He turned, and she did not. As his Mistress called forth red magic, the shrine maiden muttered, “Sorry, I don’t have any time to play around.”

The gap sealed shut, and vanished as a line.

Reimu then simply went on behind him as his spell card collided uselessly before him with the force of a sea.

A brief cry of “No!” escaped his gut as he reached out for the girl, but any further words were cut short by geyser of qi erupting from the earth and stopping her pursuit. From the swathe of energy, Meiling appeared and whipped out her leg to a shower of floral auras. Reimu backed quickly, and readied for battle again. She had only reached the gardens...

“Sorry, Sir Gen!” his companion shouted, staying firm between the Mistress and the Maiden in a tai chi stance. “I had to be sure none else were coming!”

Ah... ah...

She looked his way with eyes of passion and bid, “Now, help me! She’s slippery and I’m no good at danmaku play!”

“Heh...” He smiled despite himself, relieved and shaken. Firmly, he cried back: “Right!”

~~

The fist came down to the vampire.

With her leg severed and healing, dodging was no longer an option. She instead brought her hands low, to her side, and bellowed loudly at the opposing demon: “DIVINE SPEAR! ‘SPEAR THE GUNGNIR’!!”

Her dress was shredded from the power. Her wounds that had been sealing re-opened, She aimed at the oni’s still-whole and opposite side, and held her ground. Suika was undaunted, and came down with rage.

“And another—!” the vampire shouted, “Kouma...! ‘SCARLET DEVIL’!”

Her body ignited in a column and cross of her own power. Wicked forces rolled out and shredded the roof of any remaining tiles and of some stone. A tsunami of power was unleashed, and catastrophic.

However, her face was crushed by the oni’s fist once again.

A chunk of Suika’s body was burned away by the spear, and her front side was promptly assaulted with crimson magic.

Remilia fell, her leg tearing away from itself in the impact and quickly becoming lost in the chaos.

Yet soon, she no longer felt the oni’s fist. It was a flash of fury, and at once thereafter calm and silence. Remilia realized then... she’d won.

With her body wracked with unfamiliar pain, she looked up to the sky.

And to the silver moon: whole as it ever was, with the bloodied body of a youkai on its knees below.

[♫]

Remilia lifted herself by her elbows.

The now-shirtless oni was knelt before her: upper-face removed, and lowered arms bereft of skin. Her muscles, heart, and spine were open, there, like that.

Remilia panted with the heat of their battle leaving her, and she glared at the near-corpse that she had made to conclude it.

Of course she was bothered.

How could she ever not be? After all...

With what remained of the oni’s defeated face...

A joyful smile was carved across her lips.

--End of Chapter 18: The Division of Seasons--