Chapter Text
“Why don’t you show yourself, ‘Mistress’?”
Reimu Hakurei looked around, trying to find the mastermind of this plot. The long chase of fairies and spirits and the two fights against the maid had led her outside, into the night sky above the mansion. The moon had risen by this late hour; not that you could see it clearly, just a pale red glow behind the scarlet fog. There was a great rumbling in the air, and a cloud of bats flew past Reimu, converging in a swarming mass. From this writhing, a figure emerged.
A slender young girl, her skin a bloodless, pallid shade. She was clad in soft pinks and vibrant reds in a gothic and aristocratic western style, two leathery bat wings, black as night against the red mist, spouted from her back, lazily flapping far too slowly to support her, but still she hung in the air before her. She brushed a lock of her wavy, powder-blue hair behind one pointed ear and looked down at Reimu.
“Ah, just one? I was told there were two human intruders,” she said in a vaguely western accent.
An outsider then , Reimu guessed, based on her voice. “Sorry to disappoint, but it’s just me for now. The other one is dealing with your pet mage,” she said. She and Marisa had been ambushed by the maid and the librarian, and they had split up to deal with them.
“Oh, so that’s how it all worked out. I look forward to seeing the book Patchy will bind with her skin.” The looks of quiet amusement as she said this betrayed her age, thought Reimu. The hint of bemused malice in her child’s voice and the shadow of sadism that crossed her too-young face told Reimu that whatever this thing was, it was nowhere near as young as it appeared.
“And I assume you’re looking to do something similar to me, yeah?” Reimu asked. She shifted her grip on her gohei purification rod and stared back into those blood-red, slit-pupiled eyes. “Something cruel and unspeakable?”
“It’s not polite to assume things, especially about your host,” the girl responded. She folded her hands in front of her, like they were making polite conversation. “I’m rather thinking of asking you to leave my manor for this behavior. You’ve harassed my staff, disrupted their work, annoyed my friend and if you don’t leave soon you may disturb my dear sister.”
“Well, remove the red fog from Gensokyo, and you might make it back to your dear sister in one piece,” Reimu said, drawing a handful of ofuda talismans.
“If you think this is a game, priestess, you’re sadly mistaken,” the girl said. She flicked her hand and a massive, intricately ornate, blood-red, winged spear flew into her outstretched palm, too fast for Reimu to tell where it had come from. “This is all too real.” They both smiled tightly.
“Looks like it's going to be a long night.”
“Looks like it's going to be a fun night.”
Reimu Hakurei awoke from another dream, again anxious, disappointed and confused. These dreams of a fantasy land were always so exciting, but when she awoke it all turned back to a familiar crushing disappointment as she remembered her real life.
She rolled to check her bedside clock, and despite wanting to stay in bed another hour, she judged that it was time to start her day. She rolled off her futon and began her morning routine. Boil kettle, brush hair, toast bread, find clothes. As she spread a tiny amount of jam on her toast, she tried to remember what her dream had been about. Another of her many heroic fantasies that, like all dreams, faded almost as soon as she woke up. But this one had been so intense. Did she storm a mansion? Was she fighting a vampire with a spear?
She finished her toast, and found some clean clothes. A once-bright red hoodie, now a deeper, faded color, and an equally old pair of khaki cargo pants, now devoid of almost all color except the dull smear of age. She slipped into her pair of beat-up sneakers and tied up her hair into a loose bun, tied with one of her keepsakes from her mother, a red, frilled ribbon. The locals had always talked about her with such admiration, Reimu felt a private shame that she couldn’t remember much of anything about her, but the ribbon and the two red fabric tubes she wore on her long sidelocks felt familiar in a way nothing else did.
Finally dressed, she slid her front door up, and stepped out into the mid-morning fog of Gensokyo, Tokyo. Tucked away between Shinkaji and Udagawachō, the neighborhood was oft-forgotten by the authorities, filled equally with retirees and hipsters. Reimu grabbed her broom from inside the Hakurei Shrine, and closed the door. She checked her donation box on her way down the stairs, and pocketed the spare coins; judging them enough for a sandwich lunch from the corner store later in the day. She set out to sweep the path between the torii and the shrine, trying to keep clean this tiny corner of nature wedged between urban sprawl.
“Um, hello?” came a voice from behind her. Reimu turned to see a pale salaryman, sick mask over his face, looking around nervously as he stood on the threshold beneath the torii gate. She turned and answered him.
“Hello, what are you looking for?” she said, leaning on her broom.
“Are you…the manager of this shrine?” he asked, looking around.
“No, but I would be if shrines had managers,” Reimu responded, wondering what this could possibly be about. Another real estate stooge trying to buy up the shrine?
“Oh well, um,” he stumbled over his words before continuing. “I’ve got a bit of a weird problem, and I was given this flier about it…” he produced a slip of paper and offered it to Reimu and she took it. It read in white lettering outlined in red: “Exorcisms and Spiritual Exterminations: Hakurei Shrine Services” with a picture of the shrine and the address, little cartoon ofuda talismans lining the edges. Marisa had made these for her months ago, and little had come from putting them all over the neighborhood except for one near-sighted old woman trying to get Reimu to handle her mite infestation. Did Marisa print more of them without telling her?
“Where did you get this?” Reimu asked.
The man looked even more nervous. “Well, I was out drinking after work a few nights ago, and I may have started complaining about how…” he paused, looking embarrassed. Reimu gestured for him to continue, and he collected himself. “About how the apartment above mine is haunted,” he confided in the whisper of the terminally self-conscious. “One of the other regulars at the bar said that she knew a great exorcist who could settle the spirit, and she gave me that flier. Is that you?”
“Yes, that’s me,” Reimu said to try and calm his obvious nerves. “Do you know this regular?”
“Um, I don’t know her name.” Reimu raised an eyebrow and again gestured for him to continue, and the man explained: “Tall, middle aged, blond hair, dressed in a dark purple business suit. Didn’t socialize much. The bartender says she’s a night owl: stays until dawn, then leaves.” Despite the right hair color, that didn’t sound anything like Marisa. After thinking it over for a moment and coming up with nothing, she returned her attention to the salaryman.
“So, a haunted apartment above yours?” she asked.
“Yes, I’ve spoken to the building manager, but she doesn’t believe me. She walked me through the apartment when I lodged a noise complaint, she said it’s empty because of some kind of rot in the floorboards that she can’t find anyone to fix, but…”
“What kind of noises are you hearing?”
“At first, it was just moaning, scratching, and loud thumps at the floor,” he said. “At first, I thought it must be someone who sleeps really poorly, then when the screams started I thought that it was someone who was kidnapped, or held against their will, but since the landlord showed me that it’s empty and she keeps the door locked, I’m convinced it’s haunted. It’s happened every night for two months now, and I can’t get any sleep.”
Reimu mulled the problem over. She needed cash, but a locked apartment and an uncooperative building manager might not be so easy. She wondered if Marisa still had her lockpicking kit from her B&E days…who was she kidding? Of course Marisa still had it, the girl never threw anything away. Reimu checked her watch, and tried to remember when Marisa would be out of her classes; not until 5 pm at the latest, which left them plenty of time to prep for a nighttime ritual and exorcism.
“Alright, If you can pay, I can remove this spirit for you,” Reimu said, shifting her tone of voice to her saleswoman pitch. “Base fee is thirty thousand yen, with additional fees if the spirit is troublesome and takes longer, and a down payment of five thousand yen for materials.”
The man swallowed behind his mask. “So, you can do it soon, then?” he said as he reached to open his wallet.
“Yes, we can do it tonight. I’ll need my associate, who should be free by then.” She accepted the five bills with a slight bow. “And besides, exorcisms are best performed when the spirit is active, so we’d have to wait regardless.” She pocketed the cash, and directed the man into the shrine to get his address and take stock of her supplies.
While she may not have been as fearless as the other Reimu in her dreams, she was still an exterminator of spirits, and a keeper of Gensokyo’s balance.