Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Oi, Alice. You mind if I stay here for the night?”

“Of course I mind. If you need a place to sleep, why not just go to the shrine like usual? Or better yet, clean your house.”

“The shrine’s a no-go tonight. I got her good and mad this time.”

If that’s the case, Alice thinks, you could stand to sound less happy about it.

With great reluctance she opens her door, in the knowledge that Marisa will find her own way in if she doesn’t. Actually, that would be the best case scenario. Nights in the Forest of Magic are cold and dangerous, especially for a lone human. Even if that lone human is a witch. And she wouldn’t want to inflict Marisa’s house on anybody, not even its owner.

“Thanks, Alice. I’ll make it up to ya at some point.”

As soon as the door swings open, she breezes in as if she owns the place – although she at least takes off her boots at the welcome mat. Her socks have holes in them again, Alice notes, and instinctively she wonders where she left her needle and thread. She can’t see a hole and not want to darn it. It’s against her nature.

“Evenin’, ladies. Lookin’ good as always,” Marisa says, nodding at the dolls sitting on the shelves. She jerks her head back at Alice. “Any of ‘em running around by themselves yet?”

“Not to my knowledge, no,” she replies stiffly. “It will likely take a lot more work before we reach that point.”

“Eh. Well, no reason not to be polite, just in case.”

It is one of Marisa’s eccentricities – perhaps a charming one – that she’s more respectful with the dolls than with their owner. Maybe it’s just a sense of unity. She’s short, so much so that Alice has to look down when speaking to her, and with her mass of curled, blonde hair, she looks almost like a doll herself. Well, she would, if she would just keep her clothes in good order. Many a fine dress has suffered to enable Marisa’s adventuresome ways, and no doll on Alice’s shelves would be caught wearing things with such obvious scratches and tears.

Again her hands itch for the needle and thread. Later, perhaps, when Marisa is in her bedclothes; for Alice, sleep is just a habit after all, and there’s no harm in having something to occupy her at night.

“Have you at least eaten?” she asks.

“Sorta? I didn’t really get to finish.” The witch ambles to the dining room, pulls out a chair, and seats herself primly. Her posture is immaculate. All that time over at the Scarlet Devil Mansion has taught her proper table manners, when she cares to use them. “Don’t suppose you got any Japanese food in the pantry?”

“No. You’ll have to settle for bread tonight.”

“Dang. Well, gotta up my bread counter by one, I guess.” She kicks her feet at the table, as if waiting for Alice to sit down. “You gonna ask what happened?”

“No. You’ll tell me whether I ask you or not. And if you don’t, I’m sure that miko will complain about it to me sooner or later.”

Reimu, technically, was a peacekeeper and arbitrator of most serious disputes in Gensokyo. But Marisa had done more for diplomacy in the region than any miko could, and she did it by giving everybody something they could agree on: that seeing a kleptomaniac witch scuttling out of your front door with her pockets full of knick-knacks was extremely irritating. Give two youkai something in common to bitch about, and they’d be fast friends before long at all.

“Tch. You’re not excited at all? Man, Alice. You’ve got not soul.”

“Why should I be excited? You two argue every other day.”

“I don’t usually get kicked out, though.” Again, she seems disproportionately pleased about it. All but beaming.

Of course, Alice thinks, their fights are going to get more serious. They’re getting older. Children are quicker to fight and quicker to forgive, but the older you get, the more room you have inside you for grudges. Well… That’s what she thinks, anyway. It’s not like she’s an expert in children, or even in humans, anymore.

“Very well then. Since you’re plainly dying to let me know, you might as well start telling your story.”

Marisa eyes gleam. She loves telling tales – tall or otherwise – of her adventures. You can never tell how much fact there is in any one thing she says, but strung together, they make a fine enough yarn that people listen anyway.

“Well, I was relaxing at the shrine just like always–”

Just like always. Alice clicks her tongue. Marisa has never understood how rare that is. There are all kinds of youkai that want to visit the Hakurei Shrine – for festivals, for gossip, for companionship. None of them get in without an invitation or a donation (usually in the form of food, or better yet, booze). Alice herself brings a basket of pastries every time she walks up the steps. To be able to wander in, day after day after day, consistently empty-handed… There are youkai that are jealous of that.

“Huh? You got somethin’ to say?”

“I was just thinking, you might be want to be careful of bridge trolls.”

“Eh. They’re nice enough, once ya get to know ’em. Anyways, I was just relaxing at the shrine, right? And Reimu says, ‘Wait a minute. I just received some really good tea leaves from a visitor’, and she makes us both a cup of tea, right?”

Alice says nothing. She can tell where this is going.

“So I take a sip, and I say: ‘Just as expected, you made the tea too hot like usual.’”

Yes. It’s exactly as Alice expected.

“So she says, ‘Quit complaining about my tea all the time! If you don’t like it, then don’t drink it!’ And I say, ‘you always make it for me, so I gotta drink it. It’s called being a guest, right?’”

Something so minor, so trivial, it wouldn’t even count as a lover’s tiff.

“So she says, ‘Fine, I’ll quit making you tea then!’ and I say, ‘Nah, just quit makin’ it so hot. There’s no point having fancy leaves if you’re just gonna boil the life out of them’. And that’s about when she threw me out.”

She’s never heard such a complete nothing of an argument. Other people quarrel about lovers they killed a hundred years ago or ancient mystical treasures they lost, but Marisa and Reimu sit there and squabble about green tea. It’s maddening.

“So, what do you think?” Marisa asks.

She still has the satisfied smile on her face, like she’s looking for a pat on the back. Alice sighs.

“Well, you could have avoided it by keeping quiet.”

“Why would I do that?” Marisa asks, apparently genuinely nonplussed. She’s swinging her legs again; she can’t sit still for more than five minutes. “Reimu not bein’ able to cook is one of her best qualities, right?”

“What kind of logic is that? You have it backwards.”

“Me bein’ able to cook is one of my worst points? I don’t get it. You sure are a weird one, Alice.”

“Now that’s just wilful ignorance…”

She grumbles, but serves the food anyway. Conversations with Marisa are always hard work, but always interesting as well. Once you grasp that – learn to let go and embrace the strangeness as a passive observer, rather than somebody who’s being dragged along against their will – it’s not so bad. Though it does help to make sure you’re speaking on your own terms, not hers.

She refuses to ask why Marisa is so happy about having a blazing row with her best friend. If you ask a witch a stupid question, she’ll give you back a stupid answer – and Marisa is witch enough for that. It’s not worth the trouble.

The rich scent of black tea fills the room. Her hands are perfectly still as she pours three cups – one for her, one for Marisa, and one for the dolls. They never drink it, but just like Marisa likes to greet them when she walks in, she likes to leave the option open that they might take a sip of their own accord when she isn’t looking.

The conversation turns to other matters – reagents, spell formulas, and rare magical items. Shop talk. It’s interesting, but not dramatic. In the back of her mind, she is running the numbers on Marisa’s story – how much of it is true. How much of Marisa’s behaviour is an act. What it might mean, if it means anything. In a way, Marisa has already paid her back for the night’s lodging; when it comes to magicians, a puzzle is as fine a gift as any other.

When Marisa is asleep – oddly soundly, and always smiling – she finds her wicker basket, and turns on the oven. After all, she only has half the pieces. Tomorrow, she’ll go up to the Shrine and find the other half.

The best feature of the Hakurei Shrine is, of course, the polished wooden floorboards on the veranda. Nothing else even compares. They are lovingly maintained by none other than Suika; if you visit early enough in the morning, you can see her at work, organising drunken bobsled races with cleaning cloths for sleds and miniature versions of herself as both drivers and sled dogs. It’s something every true citizen of Gensokyo should endeavour to see at least once in their lives.

The rest of the Shrine is not so grand, even in the dazzling mid-morning sun. The weeds, which are not lovingly maintained by anyone in particular, bloom in every gap where Reimu can’t be bothered to pick them, which is, of course, all of them. The offering box is the picture of emptiness, on a level that can scarcely be imagined; one need not see, or even hear the offering box to know it is completely barren. It has fully understood and embraced the concept of emptiness, as Buddhism demands. (A pity, of course, that it’s a Shinto shrine.)

Possibly the least welcoming thing is Reimu herself, who is in an extremely foul mood. It’s easy to tell because she’s pretending that she isn’t.

“Oh, Alice,” she says, sitting up slightly on her cushion, teacup in hand. Her face snaps into a rigid, unnatural smile. “Nice to see you.”

Alice strokes a curl of hair from her face, and tries very hard to return the sentiment. Reimu, if she took care of herself, would be the picture of an an eastern beauty. Of course, she doesn’t look bad as she is; the raw material is definitely there. But it is hard to look at her and not understand that she is squandering her potential through lack of effort, something that extends well beyond skin-deep. For Alice, who finds herself something of a perfectionist, it can be difficult to watch.

“I’ve brought gifts,” she says. This is the best way to approach the Hakurei Miko: no pretences, and no time wasted. “I thought we could chat for a bit while we enjoy them.”

“Suspicious,” Reimu pronounces immediately. Her smile – already tenuous at best – collapses into a grumpy frown. “Aren’t magicians meant to be shut-ins?”

She’s not exactly wrong; magicians aren’t known for their garrulousness, and Alice herself isn’t one for idle chatter most of the time. But Patchouli provides a fine example of what happens when a witch devotes herself too wholly to research, and fails to uphold social graces. Alice is keen to avoid following in her footsteps.

“I have tarts,” she says.

Reimu’s eyes narrow, but she is unable to keep the faint note of hope from her voice. “The ones with the apricot jam?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Reimu pats the warm wood at her side, eyes sparkling. “I can make a little bit of time for you. Come on, sit down. Tea?”

She is already filling a cup before Alice has a chance to reply. She pours like a veteran of tea ceremonies: graceful, efficient, without even the slightest tremble in her hands – although the tea, of course, was brewed too hot. As soon as Alice puts down the basket, she unceremoniously begins to rummage through, noting the contents with approval.

“Mmm. As expected, your baking is excellent,” she says, after taking her first bite from one of the tarts. There are still crumbs of pastry on her lips. She hastily stuffs the rest into her mouth, and for all the world, she reminds Alice of a hamster or a squirrel, stuffing her cheeks with provisions for the winter.

It’s charming, in its own way. There’s a limit to how audacious and scruffy one girl can be, of course, but Reimu is surprisingly adept at finding that line and staying there. Perhaps that’s the reason she has so many ‘fans’ in the youkai world, and why so many of them are odd in their own right.

Alice takes care to sip her tea as Reimu eats, given that it’s been a hot-button issue lately. It’s better than usual, although not by much.

“Ahhh… You know, you should drop by more often, Alice,” the shrine maiden carries on, when she has momentarily sated her lust for sugary baked goods. Incidentally, the 180-degree mood swing is a speciality of hers. “You’re actually good to talk to. Everybody else just comes here and complains.”

Actually, Alice has barely said a word, which she rather suspects is the appeal. Still, she’s not one to complain about her host being easy-to-please. “Actually, I did have something to raise. Not a complaint, per se, but an enquiry.”

“Ugh. Fine. What’s your problem?” Reimu asks, rescinding her praise as quickly as she gave it.

Alice pauses. Touches a handkerchief gently to her lips, not to wipe away food but to hide a smile. “Well, Marisa came to visit me last night. She needed a place to sleep.”

“Oh, I bet she did,” Reimu mutters, glowering ominously and clenching her fists. Alice can see her knuckles whitening from here. Apparently all is not well in paradise. “And you let her, I bet. She’ll never learn her lesson if you do that. Just tell her to buzz off and sleep at her own house.”

“Would you sleep at Marisa’s house?” she asks pointedly.

“I wouldn’t even breathe in that house if I could help it.”

“There you go, then. Consider it an act of mercy.” Alice’s smile is polite, but cold. “She said you’d kicked her out after she criticised your tea.”

“And?” Reimu asks, chin sticking out defiantly.

“It’s rare of you to take action,” Alice begins, and allows herself to linger on that word meaningfully for a moment, “over something so trivial. I just wondered what the full story is.”

“I didn’t kick her out just because she said I make the tea wrong. I kicked her out because she keeps saying the tea’s wrong, every single time! I’m sick of it! And every time I cook, she criticises the food, too! ‘Oi, Reimu, you shoulda added more salt’. ‘Hey, don’t skimp on the pepper so much, you know?’ Give me a break! Like she’s got any room to complain. It’s not like she can cook!”

“She can, actually,” Alice replies mildly.

“What?” is the miko’s flat response.

“Do you really think that brewing a potion is so very different from making a stew? Do you imagine that she would learn fire magic and then never apply it in the kitchen?” Alice asks, rolling her eyes.

“Have you ever actually tasted her cooking?” Reimu asks dubiously.

“I have. It’s good. Not excellent, but enjoyable enough.”

“Wh… That’s… Argh!” She thumps the surface of the veranda grumpily. “If she can cook, why does she keep coming over here and making me cook for her? And then she has the nerve to complain about it afterwards when she could just make the damn food herself!”

Between the aura of malevolence and the dark muttering Reimu is doing under her breath, it seems that there is going to be a new and improved division of labour the next time Marisa visits the shrine. Try as she might, Alice can’t dredge up too much pity for her fellow witch; knowing Marisa, she’ll find a way to wriggle out of it anyway.

It would be unbecoming of her to take pleasure in Marisa’s suffering, of course. But even so, she can hardly wait to get home and break the news.

When she returns, the Forest of Magic is aglow with amber in the sunset. She leaves her basket, empty but for crumbs, in the entranceway of her western-style house.

Marisa is at the table, flicking through one of Alice’s books seemingly at random. She can read what she wants, provided she reads it in the house, an arrangement agreeable to both of them; it gives Marisa an excuse to visit, and means Alice spends less time hunting for her books.

“Hey. Ya visited Reimu, right?” Marisa asks. “She calmed down yet?”

“Not at all. In fact, she’s even angrier.”

“Ouch. What did you say to her?”

“I told her you could cook.”

Marisa responds with a sharp intake of breath, like she’s pulling a splinter out of her thumb. “Guess she didn’t take that one well, huh?”

“’Huh’ indeed. Although, I suppose that explains why you think her being bad at cooking is a good thing,” Alice says lightly. She takes off her shawl, letting the dolls spirit it away to the wardrobe where it belongs. “It’s something you’re better at than she is. And I bet you were happy just to get a rise out of her.”

She’s watches Marisa’s expression carefully. It’s easy to tell when Marisa is lying (because it is almost always), but the real trick is discovering what she’s lying about.

“I guess?” Marisa replies, surprisingly ambivalently. “It’s more about the reason she’s bad at cookin’.”

“And that would be?”

“Nope, that’s all you’re gettin’, especially after you sold me out,” Marisa says, smiling ruefully. She snaps the book shut, and puts it on the table. “I’d better go and smooth things over before somebody riles her up even more.”

“Or you’re just going to eat more of her food.”

“You’re too cynical, ya know? But I might,” Marisa admits, rubbing her nose. “For the record, I kinda like Reimu’s cooking.”

“What?” Alice stops in her tracks; the dolls hover aimlessly at her side. “Well, she’s very much under the impression that you don’t. Apparently you tell her it’s bad, every single time.”

Marisa brushes past her, sits down, and begins the arduous task of tying her boots. She’s lost too many shoes to the demands of low altitude flights, so now she only wears footwear with laces halfway up the calves. “Oh, yeah. She can’t cook at all. But just because her cooking’s bad, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it, ya know?”

“Your logic baffles me,” Alice replies brusquely; and then, with just a little more kindness, “Be careful on your approach. She may just shoot you out of the sky.”

“Heh. I know what to expect.” Her boots laced, the small witch picks up her broom and slings it over her shoulder as she steps out of the door. “Ciao, Alice. If I’m not back later, don’t wait up.”

“As if I would.”

Marisa shrugs as if it isn’t really something that concerns her, and takes to the air. Minutes later, she is just a dot on the horizon, no bigger than a bird returning home to roost. If she cared to watch closely enough, Alice could probably pick out the exact point at which the home-bound flight becomes frenzied evasive manoeuvres – although only barely.

Instead she retreats back into her home, to the study and to her dolls. The house has felt much livelier – much less still – with Marisa here, even though it was only for a night. Perhaps she can use some of that foolish energy for a new innovation, if she strikes while the iron is hot.

As she shrouds herself in abstract concepts, she gradually forgets that the puzzle Marisa gave her is not fully complete. She doesn’t know the reason why Reimu is a bad cook, and why it’s so important to Marisa, but that is immaterial. She can’t waste energy on the squabbles of humans while there is magic to be done.

Alice toils; the candlelight gutters. And for one more night, the dolls sleep soundly.

Chapter Text

The pursuit of knowledge is endless; a witch is one who has broken the limits of life to dedicate herself to it. As witches go, though, Alice is young, and there are still many things she does not know.

Like, for example, when exactly it became fashionable to stand outside people’s houses and yell instead of knocking.

She allows herself to grumble a little as she pulls on her shawl and marches out into the hallway, the heels of her boots clacking on the polished wood. She is, as a rule, hospitable; although she does not court conversation, she has no ill will against travellers. But sometimes they interrupt her in the middle of a particular interesting passage, or force her to tie off whatever she’s making, and find her more brusque than strictly necessary as a result.

“May I help you?” she asks frostily as she opens the door.

She’s taken aback when, rather than a wayward huntsman or Marisa, the person standing at her doorstep is the Hakurei Miko. People visit Reimu. It doesn’t work in reverse. Anything dumb enough to force the miko off her porch and into the world of working adults usually ends up regretting it before very long.

She has her gohei in hand, as if to confirm that violence is, indeed, an option. Fortunately, it seems as though she’s happy to at least attempt the diplomatic approach – for given values of ‘attempt’ and ‘diplomatic’.

“Well, if you’re going to beg to help me, I won’t say no. Come on. Let’s get started.”

Alice recoils. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not excused.” Reimu’s voice is flat, but not entirely unfriendly.

“You could at least tell me what I’m meant to be helping with.”

“Cooking. I need a cooking teacher, and since you stuck your nose into my business last time, you’re it.” She puts her hands on her hips; her arms are just a little scrawny, so the effect is not as intimidating as she might hope. “Now come on. We’re starting with apricot tarts.”

There are so many things to object to that Alice doesn’t know where to start. That’s the problem with Reimu; she approaches everything like a danmaku match. Marisa may claim that danmaku is power, but Reimu knows the truth. Danmaku is not power. It is force, applied from as many directions as possible all at once. It is disorientating, distressing. Highly effective.

“To begin with, I did not ‘stick my nose’ into your business. Marisa stuck it there for me. She all but begged me to hear her out. Can you imagine what might have happened if she’d run into that tabloid crow before she did me?”

Reimu smirks – a soft, smug little smile. “Nothing, that’s what. Me and Aya have an agreement. My personal life stays out of her gossip mag, and in return, I don’t shoot her on sight. And I let her trade me a bottle of sake or two for some incident scoops, from time to time.”

“Yes, well. Secondly,” Alice says, wheeling around for another angle of attack, “why cooking? I had thought you’d just make Marisa do it. Didn’t you make her cook to make up for last time?”

Reimu’s face darkens. “Yeah. I did.”

“And? Just do that again. She stays at the shrine nearly every night.” Any way you look at it, in Alice’s opinion, it’s the ideal solution. Reimu would get to be lazy and enjoy some decent food for once, and Marisa would have the chance to enjoy finally being superior to Reimu at something, even if it wasn’t danmaku. “What’s wrong? Was the food not good?”

“No. It was delicious,” the miko replies, through gritted teeth. “I hated it.”

Alice fights the urge to roll her eyes. Rolling your eyes in front of Reimu is not recommended if you have teeth left to lose. “Why?”

“Because she came into my kitchen and used my stuff and she cooked better than me, that’s why! Seriously, what the heck’s with that? She makes me cook every single night, so I should obviously be better, right? I’ve got all the practice. But she blew me out of the water!” Reimu says hotly. Her honesty, just like her anger, is searing. “I’m not letting her stay at my house and be smug with herself over her cooking skills. No way.”

“So just cook for yourself. You ate it happily enough before.”

“But then she’s getting away with it.”

Getting away, Alice wonders, with what? Being good at cooking? Displaying a level of basic honesty about Reimu’s lack of ability? Truly, Marisa’s sins are varied and deplorable.

“So, here’s the plan. First, I get good at cooking. When I’m good at cooking, I won’t feel ashamed if I ask Marisa to do it. Which means that I’ll basically never have to cook ever again,” Reimu explains loftily. “It’s foolproof.”

It’s also extremely concerning. There are different types of laziness; Reimu’s has always been the idle type, the stubborn refusal to do anything until forced. Irritating, but ultimately benign. This, however, is a calculated form of laziness: it is working hard now so you can be lazier in the future. It’s reading the school textbook on the first day so you know the answers for the rest of the year. In short, it’s–

“Just like a gap youkai,” Alice mutters.

Plans upon plan upon plans, all painstakingly worked out in advance so that the world can be controlled with nothing more than a nudge in the right direction. That isn’t what this is, but it’s where it ends. The witch can feel it in her bones.

But, she thinks, she should have at least some faith in the Hakurei miko. Somebody has to.

“Thirdly,” she says, her voice quivering a little as she rejoins the conversation, “if I were to teach you how to cook, we would be starting from the basics. Certainly not apricot tarts.”

“Come on. I’ve been cooking for myself forever. I know the basics,” Reimu scoffs.

“If that were true, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Reimu smiles, which is usually a bad sign. It means that, whatever it is that’s coming, she won’t let you wriggle out of it without a fight. Fights against Reimu are not, typically, fights that you win.

Alice sighs. At least it’s an excuse to get out of the house.

Despite being a youkai, Alice is something of a celebrity in the human village. People know her for her puppet shows, for her calm and elegant bearing, and for her habit of gently guiding lost villagers out of the Forest Of Magic. It helps, of course, that she is outwardly human, and human enough in her habits; she’s more likely to make you lunch that she is make you into lunch, which goes a long way in the villagers’ estimations of her.

Reimu, however, is not so fortunate. To the villagers, she is the do-nothing miko of the youkai shrine, who consorts with the enemy and flashes her underwear after two bottles of sake. (How true the last part is is anybody’s guess. Nobody would ever admit to witnessing such a sight, if they have plans to continue living.) As such, she attracts a fair few suspicious glances as she trails in Alice’s wake.

It does predictably little to improve her mood.

“I don’t see why we’re going shopping,” she grouses, intentionally stepping on the hem of Alice’s dress wherever it trails. “I’ve got ingredients back home.”

“And they’re all awful,” Alice replies with a shudder. Reimu’s larder is a bleak and desolate place; things lurk there that are more terrifying than any youkai yet to squat at the shrine. It’s comforting that Marisa takes such pride in developing her poison immunity, because apparently she very much needs it.

“So what? They’re gonna be cooked anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

“It absolutely matters. Good ingredients are the single easiest–” she takes care to underline that word with her tone – “–way to improve your cooking. Selecting the right ingredients is just as much a cooking skill as anything you do in the kitchen.”

“Ehhh…. Are you sure there’s not some magic potion that you can just pour over the food and it makes it delicious?”

Alices thinks for a second. “There is one that I’ve heard of, but I wouldn’t recommend it. To begin with, it’s quite rare and difficult to prepare – buying normal ingredients is easier by magnitudes.”

Reimu’s eyes glint. “Well, that sounds like the witch’s problem. If I’m not the one preparing it, it doesn’t matter.”

“For the record, I have none on hand,” Alice retorts dismissively. “Primarily because it’s intended as a lethal poison, and you die twelve hours after ingestion. Just enough time to rave about the food to your friends, and increase the number of victims.”

“Sounds twisted.”

“Not all witches are benign. Here’s our first stop.”

She pushes open the door to the general store, and politely nods her head at the shopkeeper’s greeting. Reimu trails behind her, acting every inch the petulant child; she is surprised when the shopkeeper greets the miko as well, although with a little less enthusiasm.

“Ah, Miss Hakurei. We’ve got some excellent produce in the bargain section,” they call.

At a glance, Alice can tell this is a barefaced lie. There’s some decent produce in the bargain bin, true, but the majority of it is barely fit for compost – never mind human consumption. And yet, Reimu floats over as if attracted to it by a magnetic force. With a sideways glance at Alice, she makes at least an attempt to seem as if she’s looking things over for quality, although it hardly takes a genius to see that her eyes linger far longer on the price tags than the actual ingredients.

“I’m sure she can look them over another time,” Alice tells the shopkeep, not unkindly. “Today, we’re looking for something a little more fresh.”

The shopkeeper looks at Reimu, digging her way through the bargains, and then back to Alice. “Are we?”

“Yes. We are.” She snaps her fingers; a taut length of string, attached to Reimu’s left ankle, gleams as a surge of magic runs through it. With a jerk of her wrist, she pulls the wayward miko bodily into the conversation. “Come. I’ll teach you what to look for.”

With only her ward’s sullen muttering to distract her, Alice begins the process of picking out ingredients for a stew – something hearty, hard to ruin, and easy to let simmer without any actual active effort. She picks out the best example of each with her fine dollmaker’s eye, shows it to the miko, explains the rationale for her choice, and puts it into the basket.

When she adds the carrots, Reimu looks uncomfortable. When she adds the potatos, the miko looks alarmed. But it is when she reaches for a slice of fresh, well-marbled beef that the shrine maiden can take it no more.

“Alice! Are you crazy?” she hisses. “I can’t spend that much money on food!”

“What exactly would you spend it on, then?” Alice asks. To the best of her knowledge, nobody is stupid enough to try and charge rent for the shrine, so food is logically her sole regular living expense.

“Sake, of course.”

Hopeless, Alice thinks, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter how good a chef you are. If you cook trash, you just end up with trash. Think of this as a one-time expenditure for Marisa’s kitchen labour.”

“Right. Right,” Reimu says unhappily. “I don’t suppose you could go halves? I might… not have that much on me.”

Alice looks at the shrine maiden’s thin arms, and sighs unhappily. “I’ll pay for the meat. That’s all, though.”

Apparently, it is more than enough to put a rare, but beautiful smile on Reimu’s face. Not worth the price of admission, Alice thinks – but close enough.

Half an hour later they are back at home, and Reimu is looking warily around Alice’s kitchen. It is, of course, immaculate. Utensils hang neatly on hooks around the kitchen; little jars with fat cork stoppers are lined up on the counter-top, each one labelled in clear handwriting and full to the brim with herbs and spices. Her pantry is well-stocked and well organised – out of necessity, of course. A witch’s pantry is not just for cooking, and it wouldn’t do to mistake the poppy seed for the gunpowder, or the flour for the arsenic.

If she had a slightly less lazy understudy, she would have taken a trip over to Eientei, where she buys most of her spices. Many of them have medicinal uses, and often the pharmacy will sell her any excess. With Kaguya’s power of eternity to preserve them, it’s hard to find any fresher in Gensokyo, and she can pick up other interesting things like dream pills while she’s there. However, getting through the bamboo forest is a chore at the best of times, and she doesn’t think Reimu would take kindly to the excursion.

She clears her throat. “Well, it’s about time you show me your knifework. Cut up the ingredients as you usually would. I’ll observe.”

To her surprise, the results are promising. Reimu confidently selects the proper knife for the job, and begins to slice the carrots at speed. Her cuts are clean, efficient, and more-or-less even; certainly, Sakuya Izayoi need not fear for her position, but definitely better than expected.

Reimu lays down her knife and puffs out her meagre chest. “Well? I told you, I cook for myself all the time. Stuff like this is easy.”

“Very good,” Alice says. It’s rare for Reimu to get genuine praise, so she allows her a moment to bask in it. “But you’ve only cut up half of the carrots.”

“So what?” Reimu asks. “They’re just going in the stew anyway. Honestly, at home, I don’t even bother cutting them up. It works just fine if you dump them in whole.”

“Cutting up the ingredients means they cook more evenly, and the increased surface area means they can both impart more flavour to the stew, and soak up more flavour themselves,” Alice explains coolly. “Did you think that people just cut up the ingredients for fun?”

“I thought they cut them up so they could use a smaller pot and don’t have to buy a bigger one,” Reimu shrugs. Her command of pot economics is not great; when drunk, she often argues that bigger pots should, in fact, cost less than smaller ones, because the middle is filled with more nothing and therefore the ratio of actual pot to air is smaller.

“I am a witch. I own cauldrons, some of them limited edition, and I still cut up my ingredients,” Alice says archly. “Chop the rest of the carrots, please.”

Reimu lets out a haughty sigh, and for a moment, considers a kitchen insurrection. But it occurs to her that people who give her a knife are usually too chicken to give her any instructions while she’s holding it, and she has a certain begrudging respect for bravery. After a moment of deliberation, she resumes cutting.

It is clear to Alice, however, that she’s lost enthusiasm for the task. Suddenly the cuts are sloppy, the sizes almost random, and her knifework is more about force than subtlety. In other words, she’s encountered a task that takes more effort than anticipated, and elected to half-ass it – something which no tutorial on blade safety will beat out of her.

“That’s enough,” Alice declares, when she can bear it no longer and the ingredients have been more or less disassembled. “Now, start the heat. While we’re waiting for things to reach temperature, we can talk about mindfulness.”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“Mindfulness in the kitchen,” she continues tersely, “is thinking about the people who’ll eat the food – whether that’s yourself, or somebody else – and adjusting the recipe to match their tastes. Adding a little more of this, or a little less of that… It’s an important part of a home cooked meal. In our case, let’s use Marisa as a test dummy, since we should both be familiar with her palate. If we were to adjust this recipe for her, what ingredients would we omit?”

She tries not to glance at the carrots as she says this. Marisa’s tastes are for Japanese food; she trends towards savoury, or at least bittersweet. For her, the carrots would be left out, or at least reduced. (The restriction does not seem to apply to sweets, for which Mairsa, like any proper lady, has a second stomach.)

“Obviously we use all of them,” Reimu says promptly. “More ingredients means more stew.”

“True. But it means nothing if the stew is bad, or she can’t finish it.”

“If she doesn’t finish it, that means more stew for me,” Reimu says smartly, reaching for a ladle. “Come on, let’s start cooking. I want to see what this fancy beef is going to taste like.”

It seems like there’s no getting through to her. For a while, Alice hovers as she cooks, giving advice on spices and seasoning that is largely ignored. Mechanically, there is nothing to teach, so it seems that they’ve reached the limit of how helpful a cookery lesson can be.

When the stew is done, it is enjoyable, but not fantastic. Alice tries a little, and then pushes her plate away; Reimu tucks in without restraint, glowing with praise for her newfound technique. When she goes home, she will no doubt go straight back to buying awful ingredients, straight back to just dumping things in the pot with no fanfare and little seasoning, and the day’s lessons will slide off her like water off a turtle’s back.

Alice can say, with some confidence, that this stew is the best thing Reimu has ever cooked. And, with almost equal confidence, that she will never cook anything like it again.

“I figured it out, you know. Why you think Reimu being bad at cooking is one of the best things about her.”

Late evening. The sky has been washed deep orange; the Hakurei Miko has gone home, pleased with the fruits of her labour and largely ignorant of her own shortcomings. Alice has retreated to the study, to sort out her thoughts and make belated attempts to start her research for the day.

On the shelf in her study – known only to her, and perhaps one other person – is a doll of Marisa Kirisame. Well made, of course, and the clothes are in significantly better condition than the real one’s; the face, however, has been left entirely and conspicuously blank. Too lifelike and the doll might be used for voodoo, or some other unsavoury purpose.

(Contrary to popular opinion, Alice has no use for voodoo dolls, and certainly would never bother making one of Marisa. To waste her talents on spiting one mouthy human would be an insult to the fine art of dollmaking.)

It has found use as a conversation partner – or, rather, a verbal punching bag for when one witch has to take out her frustrations with another. Marisa comes and goes as she pleases, without schedule or prior notice; the doll, however, is always there to hear Alice’s complaints.

“She’s too miserly to buy decent ingredients, too lazy to treat them correctly if she has them, and too self-centred to think about anything but her own tastes, and her own stomach,” she says, adjusting the brim of the doll’s hat. She’s quite proud of the hat. It took some effort to get it just right.

“Or, in other words: her being a terrible cook isn’t because she lacks talent. It’s not even because she lacks skill. It’s her personality that’s the problem,” she says, with a belaboured sigh. “And of course you’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

With very careful and deliberate movements, she flicks the doll in the direct centre of where its forehead might be, had she sculpted a face. It topples backwards on the shelf, the hat spilling off as it falls.

“I don’t know what you see in her,” she says, tutting. “Just so you know, she’ll make an awful housewife.”

The doll doesn’t reply, a feature that makes it mostly superior to the original Marisa. But sometimes, it lacks charm. Alice sighs; she has to concede that, sometimes, being better truly does make something worse.

Just, in fact, like that menreiki with her new Mask of Hope. She considers that for a moment. The difference between an inanimate mask and an inanimate doll aren’t so very large; perhaps being too perfect blocks off avenues for growth. In that case, deliberately introducing imperfections to her dolls might…

She dips her quill into the inkwell, and begins to write – eager to capitalise on this new line of inquiry. Perhaps there’s at least some wisdom to be gleaned from this sorry misadventure.

The moon rises over the Forest of Magic. Alice’s notes begin to take shape. Elsewhere, at the Hakurei Shrine, another witch is sitting down to enjoy a meal no better or worse than usual, and commiserating with a miko who has concluded that cooking lessons are a waste of time.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, pouring her friend another drink. “I mean, yeah. Your food’s pretty bad. But it tastes a lot better than eatin’ alone.”

Chapter Text

It is a beautiful, sun-swept day in Gensokyo; the wind is lush with the scent of nature, the clouds move aimlessly across the horizon, and washing lines are sprouting like mushrooms across the land as absurdly powerful supernatural beings seize upon the chance to dry their underclothes.

On a fine day like today, there is nothing Reimu would like to do more than trot herself out to the side of the shrine to think deeply about life, the universe, and whether she should allow it to continue. She usually makes it to step one of that process before finding that thinking is not really on the agenda, and instead spends her time loafing pleasurably around on the warm wood, occasionally returning inside for drinks and snacks.

Today, however, she has actually managed to entertain a thought. Irritatingly, it is about Marisa.

What bothers her about Marisa is that she can’t pick a thing to actually be. Everything has to be an oxymoron with her. She’s a thief that takes nothing of value, but instead spirits away random garbage and trinkets that she thinks are treasures – and then treats them like trash when she gets home, piling them high in her pigsty of a house. She’s a self-proclaimed ‘ordinary human’ who acts like a youkai and is too eccentric to be called normal in the first place. The list goes on.

Nowhere is this more evident, in Reimu’s opinion, than her attitude to cleanliness. Despite her home being terminally unclean in both the religious and conventional sense, Marisa herself is consistently the most well-bathed and best smelling person Reimu interacts with.

It does, after all, stand to reason. With magic, she can conjure water and heat the bathtub with an ease that exists almost nowhere else in Gensokyo. She’s not a youkai, so she’s more beholden to the whims of disease, and her profession involves a lot of substances you really don’t particularly want on your skin for any long period of time. Unlike other witches, she is not an obsessive hermit, and has reason enough to care about what other people think of how she smells. When you consider it, everything lines up.

It helps that she’s actually a fine soapmaker. She knows her way around a cauldron, and has all the ingredients at hand; it’s easy enough to find scented herbs in the Forest of Magic, and beeswax is surprisingly useful in spells anyway. At the very back of the Kirisame Magic Shop, sequestered behind mounds of junk, is a shelf dedicated to the little bars and oils she produces; in Reimu’s opinion this is a damn shame, because if they were where anyone could see actually see them, she’d probably do great business on them.

(She does, in fact, have a number of regular customers – chief among whom is Sanae, who fears nothing the Forest of Magic can throw at her and retains very modern sensibilities towards hair treatments. About once a week she will visit, buy a bottle of whatever seems interesting, and scrawl ‘Timotei’ on it when she gets home – just to remind herself of simpler times.)

Marisa’s affinity for water also induces her to bathe when she has no need to. Wherever there is a hot spring, Marisa can be found lounging in it; if there is a waterfall, she has searched behind it for hidden treasure. Rumour has it that she goes skinny dipping with the kappa from time to time, although there are no living eyewitnesses to confirm or deny the tale.

The only time she doesn’t smell good is when she is drunk, which Reimu doesn’t particularly mind. Generally when Marisa is drunk she’s drunk too, and smell of sake is less bothersome when you’ve spent the afternoon knocking back cups of the stuff.

The shrine maiden sighs, and takes a moment to observe a passing cloud. She is still observing it when a broomstick, hurtling through the sky at speeds that would make a lightning bolt sit up and pay attention, smashes directly through it and sends it directly to cloud heaven. Or cloud hell. Could be either. The morality of clouds isn’t Reimu’s domain, and the afterlife is only her business in that she occasionally threatens to inflict it on other people.

She pours another cup of tea, having put enough water in the pot for two. A shrine maiden’s intuition works in mysterious ways.

It is only a minute or two later that Marisa sprints up the steps to the shrine, clutching her hat (and beating out the occasional small flame). She doesn’t land directly at the shrine any more; the last time she tried, she came in far too fast and had to pull upwards at the last second, taking a strip of the roof tiles with her in the updraft – as if she’d run a razor up across the middle of a man’s head. Reimu’s response had been swift, and immense. In the outside world, they had surface-to-air missiles; in Gensokyo, they had surface-to-air miko, with much the same effect.

“Oy, Reimu. We got an incident,” Marisa lies breathlessly.

Reimu knows it’s a lie because Marisa does not, generally, collaborate when it comes to incidents in progress. Oh, she’ll help out with preventing incidents, or investigating them, but when it comes to incident resolution, she’ll go out of her way to try and pip Reimu to the post. It’s part of her being an oxymoron – ultimately, she’s just trying to steal things that the owner doesn’t want in the first place, namely work.

“Yes, yes. Here, sit down and drink some tea,” Reimu orders cheerfully, patting the sideboard next to her. “Do you want your cushion? Here. I’ll get your cushion for you.”

Hidden in the Hakurei Shrine’s storeroom is a cushion, bedding, and bedclothes, all specifically kept for Marisa’s frequent stays. The cushion was originally from the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and is decorated with a crescent moon in the centre; around it, Marisa has roughly stitched a number of stars.

“I’m tellin ya, Reimu. It’s a primo, bona fide incident,” Marisa hisses. “Did you get any mail today?”

“I don’t get mail,” Reimu answers. “If I’m wanted at the village, they send a messenger. And nobody’s dumb enough to try and send me fliers.”

This is true, but not for the reasons she thinks it is. She has long believed that people don’t advertise to her because of her fearsome reputation. If you’re a human and the Hakurei Miko enters your life, something has gone wrong and she’s about to facilitate a solution. If you’re a youkai and the Hakurei Miko enters your life, something is about to go wrong and she’s about to facilitate violence. Either way, it’s not necessarily a positive experience, and not one you’d particularly want to invite upon yourself. Such is Reimu’s logic.

The rest of Gensokyo, on the other hand, operates under the logic that advertising to somebody who has no money is a pretty stupid idea. Youkai in particular labour under the suspicion that she’ll cut up the fliers and draw talismans on the back, defeating them with the power of their own greed.

“But if ya did get mail,” Marisa demands, “where would ya put it?”

“Probably in that little box in the entranceway, where people are supposed to leave their shoes. Not that anybody does, but – hey! Where do you think you’re going?!” she asks as Marisa breaks into a dash. “What about your tea?!”

Marisa, apparently, didn’t care about the tea, which in Reimu’s world is a cardinal sin. She puts great stock in the diplomatic power of tea leaves; certainly, there’s no way she can entertain diplomacy without a cup or three circulating in her system. After one more brief, forlorn sip, she jumps to her feet and pads after Marisa, who is thundering towards the entranceway at full speed.

“Hah. I knew it!” the witch hisses, screeching to a halt.

Reimu peers obligingly over her shoulder to see what she’s fussing about. It’s not particularly difficult to do. The witch is well-known for being vertically challenged, something Reimu considers one of her finer points; it means it’s less work to keep up with her, since her legs are shorter.

She’s surprised to find that her little shoe rack, which contains zero shoes and probably always will, has been stuffed to the brim – not just to the brim, but overflowing, even – with envelopes.

“This has been happenin’ all over Gensokyo,” Marisa says grimly. “People are getting a whole bunch of letters all at once.”

“I don’t think that really constitutes an incident, though. Maybe the tengu finally decided to handle mail officially?”

Gensokyo is not known for its postal service, primarily because it doesn’t exist. The closest thing are the crow tengu, who might be convinced to deliver a letter if it’s on their route, and if you invest in a copy of their newspaper. (The recipient of the letter also has to invest in a newspaper before they’ll hand the letter over, of course). A decent portion of Bunbunmaru’s readership comes not from Aya’s talent as a reporter – which is dubious at best – but her speed as a courier.

Ignoring her, Marisa pulls the letters out of the rack with quick and nimble fingers, bundling them all up tightly. Most of them are in similar envelopes, all finished with a rustic yellow parchment-like effect. The witch’s mouth is a thin, straight line.

“Well, they do all look like they’re addressed to me,” Reimu murmurs, using her shoulder-peering abilities to maximum effect. “Who do you think they’re fro – hey!”

A magic circle flares on Marisa’s palm, and before Reimu can snatch them, the letters burst into flame. The air smells of char and sulphur; the conflagration is far brighter (or, more to the point, flashier) than any natural flame.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Even if it’s weird that they showed up, they’re still my letters! You can’t just burn my stuff in front of me. Indoors, too! Do you want to see the whole shrine go up in smoke?”

Marisa stiffens, but ignores her. She doesn’t move until the last of the letters is a film of ash on her palm; when it’s done, she snuffs the flame by snapping her hand shut. As soon as she’s done, Reimu takes the opportunity to clout her around the back of the head.

“Seriously… if you were anybody else, I’d have exterminated you by now. Quit being weird and start explaining. What’s the deal with the letters? Why’d you burn them? We didn’t even know who they were from in the first place!”

“I told ya. It’s an incident. People all over are gettin’ mail delivered, without a single tengu in sight. It keeps appearing inside people’s houses, so whoever or whatever is doin’ it, they’re breaking in. Just to deliver the mail.”

“That’s… ridiculous,” Reimu says, although she finds herself unsure. “I have barriers and wards all over the shrine. Nobody could have broken in.”

The witch shakes her head in a flurry of curls. “Alice has got ’em all over her house too. So’ve I, and so’s Patchouli. All of us woke up to a stack of mail. Whoever’s getting in, it ain’t some two-bit youkai.”

“Two-bit youkai or not, I don’t like them hanging around where I sleep.”

“It gets weirder,” Marisa says grimly. “When I checked with Alice, she’d got an apology note I wrote her a while back, but never actually sent. It shoulda been right in my study door. So someone found and delivered it to her, even though I didn’t want to send it in the first place. It’s an incident, good and proper.”

Reimu pauses. It does definitely seem like an incident. But it doesn’t feel like one. Her gut is a fine-tuned, precision instrument; it rarely leads her wrong. And right now, it’s screaming to her that this is a problem she doesn’t need to deal with. Left alone, it’ll fix itself. That’s what her instincts are telling her.

The real problem, as it stands, is Marisa herself. It’s nothing unusual for her to be gung-ho, but this is a little extreme, even for her. People might take offence. Youkai might take offence. And that’s the kind of thing that can make an incident all by itself.

By the time she has thought about this, the witch has already turned on her heel and begun to march out of the shrine, her broomstick held jauntily over her shoulder.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going? What are you going to do, just bust into every home in Gensokyo and burn their mail as well?” she asks, jabbing an enquiring finger at her best friend’s back.

“Nah. Just yours.”

To anybody else, it would sound like a joke. They would see Marisa’s cheeky grin, hear the wry tone in her voice, and conclude that it’s just a witty parting shot.

But Reimu has known her for years. Longer than anybody else. Long enough to know that if Marisa wants you to think something is a joke, then it isn’t.

But before she can say anything about it the witch is gone, soaring into the air without even a parting glance. In a straight line, too. There are only a few people that can catch up to Marisa at top speed, and Reimu isn’t one of them; they both know this.

She sighs and goes back to her tea, replaying the events of the morning back in her head.

Someone who breaks into sealed houses, steals letters that aren’t meant to be sent, and disappears without a trace.

Her first thought is Yukari, which means it’s not Yukari at all. (She knows how her life works by now; the first suspect is never the culprit. You don’t start getting close until suspect five or six.) Certainly, Yukari could do it with her gaps, and maybe there would be value to her in spying on people’s private letters – but why deliver them afterwards, and let them know something was wrong? It was just meaningless work, and there was nothing Yukari hated more than meaningless work.

She briefly considers whether the Moriya Shrine might have a hand in it, but she doesn’t know how they could. To do this kind of thing required a certain subtlety, and Sanae’s miracles are flashy by design. All the better to show off and attract followers. And if they’d gone to the trouble of delivering everybody’s letters, they’d have taken credit for it immediately.

The kappa? Sure, Nitori could become invisible, but she can only be in one place at one time. There isn’t enough optical camo in the world to get them all outfitted. The tengu? They already deliver mail, and actually get something out of it. Why would they suddenly decide to do it for free?

It doesn’t make any sense. She flops back, frustrated.

Then there’s the question of Marisa. Marisa, who smiles widest when she’s serious. Marisa, who writes letters that she’ll never send. Marisa, who burns only her best friend’s mail. A straightforward girl with a crooked personality. Why is she so invested in this incident, compared to all the others? Why is she acting like this, and what’s her plan?

If it were anybody else, she’d just beat them down – cut them off at the pass, and stop the inevitable bother that results from having a lunatic running around. But it’s Marisa. Her dishonest, sneaky, thieving best friend who she trusts perhaps more than anybody in the world. She wants to believe that whatever Marisa is doing, it’s for the best. Or at least, it won’t be too stupid.

She rolls over. The sun-washed wood of the veranda is warm against her belly. The seasons are in order; there is no mist hanging over the land; the world is still ruled by natural law. More importantly, nobody has come to complain yet. Regardless of what Marisa is doing or what’s going on, her instincts tell her:

It is not yet time for the Hakurei Miko to move.

So, regretfully, reluctantly, and strictly in service of the greater good…

She sits back, yawns, and loafs in the same spot for the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

The moon is high over the human village; it is midnight, the witching hour, when all sane and normal humans dive underneath their covers and fear to roam the streets. Those that remain beneath the pale moonlight are either drunk, foolish, or perhaps not even human at all.

Ideally, Aya Shameimaru thinks, they are all three.

Despite the late hour, the lights of Geidontei have not dimmed – although nobody will remember seeing them come the morning. She makes her way towards it, tipping her cap amiably to a local farmer who is scurrying home to an angry wife. (The human village has just as much gossip as the youkai world, she finds; it’s a shame she can’t publish it without blowing her cover).

A youkai pub. Even though she already stopped by yesterday, her pulse quickens at the thought. So much potential. So much opportunity! A place for youkai of every stripe to gather, drink too much, and let their tongues run away with them. A place for gossip and indiscretions, alcoholism and intrigue. In other words, it was a perfect source of material for the Bunbunmaru, and conveniently located in a place where few other news tengu deigned to tread. The smell of opportunity whets her lips even more than the smell of stewed vegetables, no matter how well Miyoi cooks them.

There is just one problem: one very small, very large problem. And her name is Suika Ibuki.

Where there is alcohol, there are oni, and Aya has never seen Geidontei open late without Suika holding down the bar. She arrives first, leaves last, and laughs loudest; it feels as though even the very wood of the building is suffused with her voice.

For most youkai, who are blessed in their youth and ignorance of history, she is something of a spectacle. Oni are rare above ground, and even if they weren’t, seeing a woman with the body of a child knock back enough beer to fell an elephant is entertainment enough.

Aya, though, is old enough to know better – far, far better than most. The tengu and the oni have had a long and… fruitful association, of which Suika is a potent reminder. It is a sobering thought that the little lady two stools to her left once sat among the sages of Gensokyo, and kept that company well; that she was a Deva of the Moutain, who ruled through strength of arm and force of will alone. Those little fists have crushed rebellions. Those little feet have shaken the earth itself.

In other words, it’s like bumping into her old manager every time she walks into the bar. And when your old manager buys you a round, it can be very difficult to refuse. She’s still not quite sure she’d consider Suika a friend, but she certainly feels like she’s become the oni’s new favourite plaything.

“Welcome, Miss Shameimaru!” The pub’s poster girl greets her as enters; it seems she has a talent for remembering the names of her returning customers. “Would you like your usual?”

“Absolutely not, but that might be what I get,” Aya says wryly. Her ‘usual’, at this point, is measured in kegs; trying to go beer for beer with an oni is a dangerous and expensive habit. “Let’s just start with some of your cooking, and we’ll see how the night develops.”

“Of course. Is there anything in particular you’d like?”

“Surprise me. So far, it’s all been good.” Her nose wrinkles. “You know, I’ve actually been thinking about writing a review for this place in my paper. Should attract plenty of business.”

“Please don’t,” Miyoi says sharply; even the whale-shaped hat she wears seems to glower in disapproval. “If our human customers find out about our midnight hour, Geidontei might end up shutting its doors for good.”

“Shame. As the head writer–” And editor, and typesetter, and photographer, and fact checker, and printer, and saleswoman and all the other little odd jobs that she isn’t actually very good at because they don’t interest her and she’s got deadlines to make, “–of Gensokyo’s most reputable newspaper, I’d be happy to feature you at any time. For a little discount on my tab, of course.”

Miyoi is silent, but it is a very polite kind of silence – the picture of a bartender who is listening to the sob story of a valued patron. Not many youkai could manage such a feat; Aya notes it with interest. Youkai who live among humans are a story that’s still developing, and one she’s watching eagerly.

A familiar drunken voice floats over from a barstool. “Don’t worry about your tab. I got it for you. For old time’s sake, eh?”

It is worth noting that Suika does not slur her words. She should, by all rights; her syllables should slide and crash into each other like cats running across a polished wooden floor, lubricated by the sheer amount of alcohol she consumes. But they don’t. She has spent so much time talking while drunk that she’s mastered the art, and there’s no difference in her speech whether she’s paralytic or stone sober – not that any living creature can claim to have seen the latter.

But she should slur. The laws of physics demand it. Basic decency demands it. And so, if you aren’t paying attention, you might find your mind inserting a little drunken slurring where none actually exists. The incongruity between what the brain hears and what the ears report make listening to her something of a unique experience; half of the time, you don’t know whether she’s drunk, or you are.

Her voice is crisp and refreshing, at least for tonight. One of her favourite party tricks – and what is an oni without a party trick? – is to change the density of air in her lungs and around her vocal chords to amusing effect. She can run the gamut from a mouse on helium to an elephant singing opera, depending on her mood – another thing that makes listening to her faintly disorienting. Especially when she shrinks herself to the size of a china doll and then speaks to you in an earth-rumbling baritone.

“Miyoi, we’re takin’ one of the back booths,” the oni continues, leaping off her stool and landing on unsteady feet. “Get me… hm. A couple cups of that umeshu I put in the back room. I’m going easy on her tonight,” she says, jerking a thumb towards Aya.

“Ayaya… I feel like a fish in a net. A tengu, spirited away by an oni… well, I suppose that’s the order of things.” Aya keeps her voice low as Suika wobbles away in her distinctive gait; even Miyoi seems to be giving her a look of vague pity. They both know she’s in for a rough night. “Whatever you’re making for the food, double my order. I’ll need something to soak up the booze.”

Miyoi nods, jots something down in her notebook, and rushes away to the next table. Aya follows in the oni’s footsteps, watching the tips of her her horns sway back and forth at eye level. Suika’s fetters rattle and clink as she staggers onwards; she is always making noise, always swaying back and forth, always sowing her oddly benign havoc. A little pandemonium on legs. She takes them to a booth, tucked away in the corner, as private as could be expected in this kind of establishment.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Aya asks as she sits down. She takes her notepad and pen out of her pocket and sets them on the table. Just as a precaution, of course. It’s useless to go to a pub for information if you’re going to get too drunk to remember any of it, but she can at least write some of it down and end up with something semi-salvageable in the morning. She always has fun trying to puzzle out her notes the morning after; her handwriting generally gets more and more indecipherable as the night wears on. “Wait, don’t tell me. You’ve finally decided to purchase a subscription to Bunbunmaru?!”

“Nobody who actually knows you is dumb enough to read your paper,” Suika retorts. Aya winces. Oni are known for their honesty, and for their brutality; often, they combine the two. “I just wanted to know if you were gonna concede the bet early.”

The bet? The bet. The bet! Aya tries the words out several times in her mind, trying to see if changing the intonation will unveil their meaning. The question mark doesn’t do much for her, honestly. It isn’t emphatic enough. The exclamation mark, though, has some real legs to it. Everything sounds better with exclamation marks, in her opinion. The more, the better. It’s a philosophy she applies daily with the Bunbunmaru, to mixed results.

There is time for Miyoi to arrive with stewed vegetables, savoury snacks and the first drinks of the evening before she finally stumbles onto the first hazy suggestions of an answer. “Eh…? Something about… delivering things? I don’t remember exactly.”

Suika leans forward, slouching across the table as if she were relaxing in her own home. “Oh? You don’t remember how, last time, you got too big for your bloomers after your fifth bottle and started mouthing off?” A wicked grin spreads across the oni’s face as she watches Aya’s expression. “Somethin’ like: ‘Oh, you oni, you think you’re so tough, but try running a newspaper. You’d be way too much of a musclehead to manage a delivery schedule’. Wasn’t that what you said?”

“Ahaha. Ha. I… might remember having said something like that.”

“You did. And do you know what I said? I said, ‘Fine. You wanna make it a competition? I bet that next week, I can deliver more letters than you can, even though I’m not a tengu and I don’t have a delivery route.’ And you agreed.” She stretches out her arms as far as they’ll go, and cracks her fingers ominously. “So. This was day one. How many letters did you deliver on your route?”

Aya gulps. She notices that Suika is very deliberately not telling her what she bet, which implies it is something deeply horrifying, and wonders if she can weasel out of it by saying she didn’t remember and therefore wasn’t actually competing. From what she can tell, the odds aren’t great. She did know about the bet, after all – for the minutes or hours before she blacked out and forgot the entire evening. She’d received and understood the challenge, and what she did after that was her own problem as far as the oni was concerned.

“None,” she moans, knowing that Suika already knows the answer. “There were no delivery requests today.”

“Right. And that’s because I got ’em all. I split myself into a mist, spread myself out over all Gensokyo, went into people’s houses and took all their letters. Every envelope with a name on it, I took,” the oni says, grinning wickedly.

“Ayayaya… What a brute force solution.”

“I know, right? After that, I just turned myself into a squad of mini-mes and started delivering. I got about half of it done today, and after tomorrow, every single letter in Gensokyo’s gonna have been delivered.” The grin widens; the teeth are sharp. “If you don’t think you can win, I’ll generously allow you to concede early. All this mail business is cutting into my drinking time.”

Aya groaned. This was why you didn’t get into direct competitions with the truly high rank youkai. There’s always something, some way that they can leverage their ridiculous abilities against you. “Ahhhh… Just out of interest, what did I actually bet? I was drunk at the time.”

“You said that if I could make more deliveries than you, you’d let me pluck your tail feathers.”

Aya stares back blankly. “I don’t have tail feathers. I’m a crow tengu, but we’re not that closely associated with birds.”

“Well, I’ll find that out for myself, won’t I?” The oni fixes her with a drunken, lecherous stare. “If you concede early, we can go somewhere private before the skirt comes off.”

“Dang. I hate to intervene just as it’s gettin’ fun, but I’m gonna need to talk to you two about somethin’.”

Both youkai snap their heads towards the new voice, and they find Marisa Kirisame, leaning carelessly over the booth divider. She’s not wearing her hat or her witch’s dress; it’s her blonde hair and fearless smile that sets her apart from any other human in the village. Without any fanfare, she climbs over the divider and plops down into the seat next to Aya.

“How long have you been listening in on us?” Aya asks.

“The whole time. I came in right after you, ya know? I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this mail thing all day, and I figured, well, the mail’s tengu business, right? So if I follow the most suspicious tengu, I’m bound to stumble onto somethin’.”

“What’s the problem with the mail?” Suika asks. “Did I deliver stuff to the wrong place?”

“Nah. You just delivered it.” With perfect confidence, the witch helps herself to some of Aya’s food and a sip of the umeshu before carrying on. “Sorry, but I’m gonna have to ask ya to cut that out.” She thinks for a second, which is long enough for her to finish Aya’s drink. “Actually, scratch that. You can keep deliverin’ letters to people, but just quit delivering them to Reimu.”

The table falls quiet for minute. Two youkai minds, with centuries of life experience, quietly spin their wheels.

“Oh, I get it. You were writing her love letters,” Aya smirks. “This is going in the Bunbunmaru for sure. ‘A forbidden romance between Gensokyo’s foremost incident specialists! The forlorn witch, writing sweet letters to the Hakurei Miko! A star-crossed love!’ It’ll sell like hot cakes!”

“Oh, right. I thought it was weird that so many of yours were on fancy paper. Love letters, huh? That’s kinda nostalgic. Although it’s definitely the coward’s way of doing things,” Suika says. For a moment, her face softens; there’s some level of sympathy there, although it is quickly swallowed up by something more combative. “So let me get this straight. You’re really gonna try and force us to stop our bet, because you’re too much of a chicken to let her see your letters?”

As stealthily as she can, Aya begins to grope for her camera. At the rate things are going, there’s no way the night is going to end without a spellcard duel. She can already see the terms being drawn up: if Marisa takes the victory, the whole delivery bet is called off. And if Suika takes the victory? It’s just wild speculation on her part, but she knows that Suika values honesty, and has a soft spot for humans and their wacky antics. Particularly when it comes to Reimu. If Suika wins, then she’ll probably make Marisa march up to the miko and deliver her love letters by hand – an oni’s gentle, yet forceful support for a kindling romance. Either way, it’s going to be fascinating. Top shelf news, and subscriptions for miles. She shivers in anticipation at the thought.

“Nah, it ain’t about the love letters. I wrote those to a whole bunch of people,” Marisa grins. “Spent most of the day runnin’ around and explaining myself.”

Aya blinks. It’s not the spellcard duel she was looking for, but it might be something even better. “Ayayaya… Young people nowadays have such loose morals.”

“Like you were any better when you were her age,” Suika snaps back.

“It ain’t even like that,” the witch carries on. “It’s about magic. Some of my spells are powered by love, right? But sometimes, there’s not gonna be love just floating around that you can draw on, especially not in a spellcard duel. So, you gotta condense it down. Put it in a tangible form,” she says, striking her palm with a fist. “Easiest way to do that is with a love letter. That way, no matter what, you’ve always got it on tap.”

“How boring.”

“Right? But yeah, that’s why I was writing love letters to folks. Testing out all the variables, seeing what makes the best fuel for the mini-hakkero. Believe it or not, Reimu actually got the least out of anybody,” Marisa grins. “It ain’t about love letters. It’s about the other ones. The ones that aren’t from me. Here, take a look.”

She passes a letter over to them – one that’s already had the seal broken, and is a little dog-eared from being in her pocket. Everything Marisa handles becomes dog-eared in short order.

“I swiped this one from her this morning, and then burned the rest. You wanna do the orders, Newspaper Girl?”

“Let’s see here… ‘To the Hakurei Pig...’ Wait, Hakurei Pig? ‘If we should ever cross paths again, know that’… ‘curses upon your household’… With a horse?” Aya blinks, and shakes her head in disbelief. “This is vile. I’m impressed.”

“Yup. I’ve seen quite a few letters for her like that. Sometimes it’s from the human villagers, but a lot of the time, it’s from random youkai. I see them when I’m, uh… browsing,” Marisa explains, dancing around her own acquisitive habits.

“But I thought she got along well with youkai? The Hakurei is basically a youkai shrine, after all.”

“Sure, with the big, spooky ones who can look after themselves. The small fry she just bats aside without really thinking about it? Not so much. Of course, they don’t have the guts to tell her what they think of her in person, or even get their letters delivered, because she’d definitely go after them. So, you get stuff like this.” Marisa shakes her head slowly. “So, that’s about the size of it. The whole love letter thing ain’t here nor there. But I don’t want Reimu to have to deal with seein’ this kinda junk. How about it? Suika?”

The oni weighs her options, her hand drifting over to her cup. She downs it contemplatively.

“Well, it’s a better reason than I gave you credit for. And I don’t think you’ve been lying to me – much, anyway. So I guess I could hold off – on a few conditions.”

“Shoot.”

“First off, we gotta settle the bet. I’ll call the whole thing off – including the tail feathers – but only if Miss Bunbunmaru here acknowledges the loss.”

“Done and done,” Aya says, with a sigh of relief. “Ayayaya… I was going to concede anyway.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted.” The oni turns a surprisingly steady gaze to her, even though the scent of sake lingers in the air. “You may not be my underling any more, but I don’t want you losing respect for me. When you start mouthing off and saying I can’t beat you, I’ll beat you down every time. Got it?”

Aya winces. Is that supposed to be a compliment? Is she meant to feel like her respect is valuable? Or is it just an old, powerful youkai flexing her power? Even with an honest oni, things are never straightforward in Gensokyo.

“Second of all, you,” Suika says, turning her eye to Marisa, “gotta answer me a question. You said Reimu got the least letters from you out of anyone. Why’s that?”

For the first time in the whole conversation, the witch looks uncomfortable. She takes another sip of Aya’s umeshu – for courage, no doubt. “Well… y’know. It’s because the ones for Reimu are the ones I actually use. They work better.” She touches a finger to one of her forelocks, no doubt wishing she had worn her hat tonight; she has no wide, witchy brim to hide her face behind. “Couldn’t tell ya why. Must be because she’s a wood element, or somethin’ like that. They burn real good.”

“That right?” the oni asks, grinning. She’s sharp enough to know when she’s being lied to – and she’s spent enough time with humans, and with Yukari, to know when to let it pass. “Last condition: you’ve been making merry with our booze for a while now, so you’re stuck drinking with us tonight. And the next round’s on you.”

“Booze is probably the least toxic thing I handle from day to day, so I guess I’m in.”

“Oh yeah? Mayoi got something in the other day that I guarantee will change your mind. You’d better know when to tap out.” She pauses. “And, like I said, I will absolutely not deliver any letters from now on.”

Aya sits back, breathes a sigh of relief, and prepares herself to fade into the background. In the end, she’s gained nothing from tonight – no saleable news, no danmaku photographs. Actually, the only thing she’s gotten from it all is a headache. But that’s par for the course. Suika has a new chew toy, and she’s sure that Marisa will let some interesting stories slip when she gets drunk enough. It will all work out.

A few days later, Reimu finds herself at Geidontei – thirsty, as always, for sake. Miyoi smiles at her, and presses a stack of letters into her hands: all on surprisingly fine stationary, and all addressed in a scruffy, but surprisingly charming, hand.

“Somebody left behind these in the pub the other day, so I kept them for you,” Geidontei’s poster girl says with a professional smile. “One of our late-night patrons.”

“Tch. There’s always got to be something. I can’t even go for a drink without there being something,” the miko sighs. “I thought Marisa said she solved the whole letter thing, but I guess not. You’d better make my order a double, Miyoi.” She grimaces. “I think I’m going to need it.”

Chapter Text

Renko’s slippers are in the hall. That’s the thought that Maribel Hearn keeps coming back to, time after time, like a gear spinning in its groove. Renko’s slippers are in the hall.

It is 1:34am. More precisely, 1:34 and eighteen seconds. Nineteen. Twenty. She watches as the clock slowly ticks away. Atomic, of course. Very accurate. More accurate than a normal person really needs. Renko laughed when she installed it in their little shared dormitory. Even more when she moved her armchair to face it.

Right now Renko is asleep, splayed gracelessly across her bed. She’s a little drunk. She keeps a few measures of old-style alcohol under the sink, half-heartedly disguised as drain cleaner, and helps herself to a glass or two whenever Merry goes missing unexpectedly. A magic potion to ease a sharp and unquiet mind.

And on her feet, which dangle listlessly from the edge of the sheets, are her slippers, which she never bothered to take off before she threw herself into bed. But, of course, Renko’s slippers are in the hall.

Merry sighs, and takes a sip from a cup of black tea.

She doesn’t know when it began, because it began a little bit at a time. Sliding. Eliding. A frayed edge to the fabric of her expectations. A gap that grew and grew, always on the edges of her perception. She didn’t notice it until it overwhelmed her.

She’s been told her clan has always been able to see the borders of the world – the edges of the box in which the supernatural has been locked. Perhaps they have. Perhaps a few have even dared, like her, to wander those borders and explore what lay beyond them. Perhaps they, too, threw aside wisdom and caution in their search for knowledge, and slaked their curiosity at the cost of themselves. Nobody can say. Maribel Hearn has no relatives in Japan.

But if they have, few have delved as deeply as her, or as quickly. She was born into a world that is dry and sterile. Clinical. Formed up by humans from right angles and grids. What lies beyond the border is lush, vital, flourishing. Beautiful. To know it is like breathing the fresh air of the mountains after years in the city; there is ambiguity, there, and depths to ponder. She needs that place. Renko needs it. Perhaps every human needs it.

Her powers grew as if she were falling asleep: slowly, and then all at once. Suddenly she could take things back, touch them, feel teeth tear her skin. She could show visions, even pull people through the borders with her. Have a companion on her great adventure. As long as she was near a shrine, the potential was almost limitless.

That was the problem. Subjectivity is more true than objectivity, she once claimed. ‘Near’ is a very subjective word.

At first, the boundaries moved by only a few feet or so. Nothing all that noticeable. It was convenient, even. And then, slowly but all at once, they began to expand. Renko came up with a theory, as Renko does; she thought that perhaps it had to do with the area of the shrine’s influence – where its followers lived, where their faith pooled up and resided, even after their deaths.

Then what counted as a ‘shrine’ began to change. At first it was only traditional Japanese shrines, as Merry would have recognised them. But soon enough, churches, synagogues, mosques – anything religious, that had seen worship – would do. The places that lay beyond them were strange, sometimes terrible. Larger than life.

Then –

Then even little ‘shrines’ began to count. Places in the house to burn candles for dead relatives. Graveyards where mourning could be heard. Roadside tributes of flowers for car crash victims. Soon – soon it was any display that had been arranged with enough thought and care, and which they would return to look at. Collections of plush toys in people’s rooms. Art galleries and museums, with their carefully routed exhibits. Even the subjects for the still-life painting of a struggling artist.

It was at that point that she realised she could no longer see the boundaries; they had moved so far, and covered so much ground, that she could never catch them.

One day, in a coffee shop with light jazz playing in the background, Renko asked her that awful question, and she gave her that awful response.

“Say, Merry. When you travel over the boundaries, do you think you’re travelling through time, or through space?”

“Both, usually,” she had mused. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

She closes her eyes. Opens them.

The clock reads 1:29am and thirteen seconds. The kettle has come to the boil, to brew the tea she has just drank. And of course, Renko’s slippers are in the hall.

It’s like trying to walk on black ice. Invisible, and insidious. With no warning, she will step in the wrong, walk through the wrong confluence of borders and boundary, and she will slip – usually a few seconds or a few minutes at a time. Most of the time she can catch herself before she truly falls. Most of the time. Like walking on ice, it’s harder when she’s tired.

There is a measure of control she can exert. A little subjectivity she can impose. If she can keep a destination in mind, she’ll usually end up there – although for the accidental jaunts, it seems she can either pick a time or a place. Never both. The more attached she is to a particular place, the better it works. (It is hard to be attached to a particular second, or minute, without already having been there). Mostly, she just scrambles for the place she already is. Tries to go about her day as she planned it, only with a few seconds misplaced her or there.

The direction of travel seems pseudo-random. She can’t tell in advance which it will be, but it seems to be weighted towards the future. Of course, that would make sense. Humans are used to travelling towards the future, although in a more measured pace than Merry herself. The past only rarely happens by accident; it needs concentration, visualisation. Ideally, an object or a token that has seen those days. Some places are harder to reach than others because of that.

She takes one last look at the clock, notes the time, and makes herself another cup of tea.

She hasn’t told Renko that she’s slipping through time. Renko knows that she’s slipping – how could she not? One moment she is there and then she is gone, sometimes for minutes or hours at a time. Vanished. But Renko still believes she is going to Shangri-La, or Gensokyo, or any number of other mystic places; it is a process rendered ‘safe’ by familiarity. After all, she knows how to get back from Gensokyo. When it comes to time, she’s not so sure.

When she returns, they laugh together – “Are you sure you’ve not got a bit too much latency, Merry?” – and, more and more often, they will hug. If she’s gone for too long, Renko will press her for details of her adventure, and she will make up a story about how she was playing with fairies, or enjoying tea at a western mansion, when in fact she might have been twenty years in the future, watching as their familiar dormitory building is demolished by a wrecking crew. (For five years or so, the lot remains empty while the bureaucrats wrangle; after that it is converted to a loose bundle of shops, of which Merry’s favourite is an exotic pet store.)

She’s seen that demolition three times, incidentally. From different angles, too. An instrumental lesson that man-made geography is impermanent, and just because a building meant something to her does not mean it is excluded from city planning.

But despite how strange and confusing her life is, she is still a human, and a human is a machine designed to see patterns. Once you’ve discovered a pattern, you can predict it, adapt to it. Learn to trick it. And recently, Merry has learned quite a trick.

Before now, she has concentrated on a location for an anchor point, or, more rarely, a time. Neither are entirely safe. Objects have the same flaw. But she has realised that there is one thing in the world that she can rely on – that she knows will rarely, if ever, lead her to danger, will reliably place her at a location she knows, and can only ever take her to a small range of time periods. A static – well, mostly static – point in the continuum.

Her name, of course, is Renko Usami. Her own personal living GPS, who can always tell her where and when she might find herself, under the stars.

Where Renko goes, she is safe. Renko does not stand around inside buildings that are being demolished, or cities being shelled; she can almost always be found in Japan, often at famous supernatural locations that Merry has either been to or heard of. She can always be found within the same century or so, and thus Merry’s money is always good if she needs to buy food. And, without fail, the Renko Usamis of the future are always, always delighted to see her.

And that, more than anything else, is what worries her the most.

They’re so… joyful. And relieved. They take her into their arms and their homes, wine her and dine her. They stay up until the evening, or however long it is until she ‘slips’ back to her regular time, just talking to her. The Renkos of the future are good at giving her facts, but never answers; they’ll tell her about the world, but not about their place in it.

The Renkos of the future sleep in a single bed. They own only one toothbrush.

At what point does she disappear from Renko’s life?

Is it simply the nature of time travel? Each time she winks forward, does she create a timeline where, to Renko, she has simply disappeared without trace, only to return years or decades in the future with no explanation and no signs of ageing? What, if anything, exists in the gap that she leaves?

That, too, terrifies her. Nature abhors a vacuum. What does it do with the space she used to occupy? How does her presence, or lack thereof, change the course of history? She very much doubts that she’ll have all that much effect on the world, but the Swallowstone Naturalis Historia that she and Renko published has already had some influence; to those people, at least, her existence is non-negligible.

The thoughts swirl inside of her. Her brow wrinkles.

The future, and everything within it, lacks definition. It is ambiguous, fuzzy, ever-shifting. Everything mixes together. Much like herself, nowadays. She has broken through the boundaries, pushed them as far as they will go. And she would do anything to put them back.

In the bedroom, Renko lets out a loud snore. One of her slippers falls off her feet.

In four hours and fifteen minutes, she will wake up. She will clutch her head; her eyes, which gaze into the sky and fix her co-ordinates without doubt, will be bleary. She will refuse to talk until she has a cup of coffee; the silence will be difficult to bear. In her heart of hearts, she will be angry at Merry for abandoning her yet again. It will be the first time that she shows it, and it will hurt them both.

Half an hour after that –

Half an hour after that she will be dressed. They have a date at a particular shrine near Nara, and they will need to be up early to catch the train. She will find her slippers in the entrance hall, and look back at Merry with confusion.

“Whose are these?” she will ask.

“Aren’t they yours?”

“I don’t have a pair of slippers like these.” She will pick them up, examine them with a frown. “Seriously. Whoever these belong to, they’ve got some weird taste.”

“Is that right?”

“Huh? I guess they do fit pretty well, though. Maybe I’ll keep them. Since they’re a mysterious artefact and everything.”

Sixty years from now, in one possible timeline –

Usami Renko will have tea with an old friend that she hasn’t seen in years. One that she has missed dearly. She avoids giving away too much about how she’s lived. About sorrows, and loneliness, and things like that. But in a moment of weakness, she will say –

“Ah, but I do wish I’d kissed you back when I had the chance.”

There will be a silence, and then she’ll laugh it off. But her guest will smile thoughtfully back at her, offering no judgement. Later that night, Merry will be gone – taking a loaned pair of slippers with her.

And as the Renko of four hours from now tries them on –

Merry will smile mysteriously, brush the hair away from her cheek, and make sure that no future Renko is ever left wishing that they had the nerve to kiss her. Only that they had the chance to do it more.

It will be the fourth time that Maribel Hearn has experienced that moment. It probably will not be the last.

She sighs quietly, and drinks her tea. Even if she’s lost control. Even if she’s scared. Even if this is a problem she doesn’t yet know how to fix.

Renko’s slippers are in the hall.

Chapter Text

Momiji Inubashiri furrowed her eyebrows.

They were, to be clear, magnificent eyebrows. Fluffy and well-kept, they were the envy of much of the rank and file patrol tengu, and for good reason. At rest, they were cute (although using the words ‘cute’, ‘puppy’ and ‘Momiji’ in the same sentence within earshot of her was a good way to get your insides put on the outside). But when her brow creased, they gave her an aura of dignity. Of gravity.

This was fortunate, because she creased her brow so often she could have started doing origami with it. It was her default thinking face, and she did rather a lot of thinking – mostly over the shogi board, but occasionally about other things as well. The ability to consider an action before you did it was a surprisingly rare quality in Gensokyo; even those that had the capacity rarely exercised it, leery of the consequences that might ensue.

“Looks good,” she pronounced, after a few more seconds of intense squinting. “No hairline cracks that I can see.”

Nitori breathed a sigh of relief as the white wolf tengu handed her latest project back to her. Momiji’s patrol route often took her past the Genbu Ravine, where Nitori made her home; after seeing her make the rounds for years on end, she’d eventually reached out to offer her some refreshments on her way. (Nitori could hardly be called a social expert, and most of her overtures at friendship began with snacks. It wasn’t subtle, but it worked.)

After a while, it started to become a routine for Momiji to stop by with Nitori when her rounds were done. They would eat, drink a cup or two, and play for a while with a shogi set that Momiji had donated to her; Nitori would ramble about her inventions safe in the knowledge that Momiji would never bother to steal her ideas, and Momiji would complain dryly about the antics of her superiors on Youkai Mountain. It was a mellow, undemanding friendship that both of them had grown to enjoy.

In return for the food, drink and shelter on rainy days, Momiji would obligingly look over Nitori’s inventions. She didn’t understand most of what they did or how they worked, but she did understand metalwork after going through many, many swords in her career, and she could pick out shoddy blacksmithing from about half a mile off. Her eyes, which could see a thousand ri into the distance, were also well-suited for finding miniscule flaws nobody else could see (though she often complained of headaches if she looked too closely for too long).

This was the first – and so far, only – invention Nitori had asked her to actually test, though. It had gone through multiple tweaks and redesigns as time went on, and the current model looked nothing like the original concept, but by now there was a certain nostalgia to it.

“We should get moving while there’s still plenty of light,” she said. “Shogi can wait.”

“You’re sure? Oh! In that case, can you grab the cooler, ally?”

The cooler was one of Nitori’s more useful inventions. Ice wasn’t too hard to find in Gensokyo, thanks to a certain fairy and her antics, but it melted quickly unless you had a lot of it in one place. Nitori’s cooler, inspired by the outside world, made it last much longer before it melted. As she lifted it, she could hear the clink of bottles being jostled by cubes of ice.

Nitori’s made her home in one of the smaller crevices of the ravine, winnowed out by the rushing water. It stood out because she’d built a small jetty as a consideration for her less aquatic visitors; most kappa simply built directly into the cliff face, often with the actual entrance to their homes underwater. It was one reason the tengu favoured her for business; wet fur and wet feathers were no fun for anybody.

They made their way out to the end of the jetty, and set down the cooler next to a pair of rickety wooden chairs that never failed to groan when sat down upon. After Nitori set up her instruments, she handed her invention back to Momiji, treating it as though it were a delicate and priceless object.

And, in a sense, it was. There was definitely nobody who would actually pay for it; it was, in Momiji’s view, an utterly useless product. In her hands, gleaming quietly, was the first and only kappa-made fishing rod.

Obviously, kappa did not need fishing rods. They were aquatic youkai; diving beneath the surface to catch fish was as easy as breathing for them. Even tengu like Momiji had no real need for such a thing. With their speed and strength, many of them made sport of snatching fish from the river with their bare hands.

But even so, it had been Nitori’s favourite pet project for a little while, something she worked on whenever there was nothing else consuming her attentions. She’d started it after seeing an outside-world fishing rod that had washed up in the junk shop near the human village; it had struck her that, precisely because kappa had no need for fishing equipment, it was one area where human technology had completely outstripped them.

Kappa were capricious creatures. They only worked on what interested them. Unless Nitori invented something herself, they’d lag behind humans in fishing technology for the rest of time. That was her story.

That said, she had her own capriciousness to deal with. She may have invented the Nitori Rod, but actually sitting down and casting a line to test it needed more patience than one kappa could contain. Luckily, patience was something Momiji in spades. She’d never get through lookout duty otherwise.

“The reel feels more responsive,” she commented. Nitori nodded, scribbling down the feedback on some scrap paper.

Originally, Nitori hadn’t quite grasped what the reel was meant to do. She knew it had to have one – why would the humans have put it on their fishing rods otherwise? – but she’d assumed it was some kind of built-in toy to keep the fisherman entertained while he waited for fish to bite. If she hadn’t had the foresight to consult the Moriya Shrine’s priestess beforehand, she may have accidentally introduced the fidget spinner to Gensokyo.

This said much about the state of kappa knowledge on the art of fishing, but it wasn’t like Momiji had been much better. At first she had completely ignored the reel and simply hauled the fish up with brute strength alone, since it felt more efficient than messing around with the reel. Unsurprisingly, the first few prototype rods didn’t last very long. Durability quickly became a critical issue for Nitori’s development cycle, and soon they ended up with equipment that could actually withstand the strength of a mountain youkai.

Eventually, once minor matters of technique had been ironed out (mostly via Momiji using her clairvoyance to spy on human fishermen), testing began in earnest. Momiji fished and gave her thoughts on the rod’s performance, Nitori took notes, and between them they would polish off a few bottles of whatever alcohol Nitori happened to have in the cooler that week.

She learned quickly that Momiji preferred lighter drinks. The oni that once ruled Youkai Mountain had been ferocious drinkers; the tengu who had served under them followed suit. Momiji was an exception. Her delicate nose didn’t agree with strong spirits. While she found it no easier to get drunk than any other tengu, she didn’t enjoy the hard liquor they tended to favour.

Often they chatted while Momiji fished. They’d found common ground in shogi, at which Nitori was passable and Momiji a passionate expert. The white wolf made it a rule to never leave on a completed board; she would either stop before the finishing move, or, if need be, play out the first turn of a new game before she left.

(This, Nitori discovered, was a mannerism that had grown popular with the mountain tengu. Leaving a shogi game unfinished gave you an excuse to make further social calls; conversely, leaving on a finished game implied you had no more business with your host, and no desire to darken their door again.)

There was one other topic they had in common, but it was one they never spoke about: Aya Shameimaru.

The crow was a regular customer for Nitori, who provided cheap servicing on her camera in exchange for the promise of being kept from the pages of Aya’s gossip rag. It was a promise that had been more or less kept, although there were moments where Aya pushed the boundaries. Unfortunately, having to check whether Aya was fulfilling her part of the bargain meant Nitori had become one of the Bunbunmaru’s most dedicated readers.

She’d made the mistake of mentioning this to Momiji once, and had found the wolf’s usually stoic face curling into a sneer. Gensokyo’s expert on optical camo was one kappa who knew when to beat a retreat, and that line of conversation was summarily abandoned.

It did make her curious, though, and after gentling fishing for details from other tengu and Aya herself, a picture of the problem began to emerge.

Many on Youkai Mountain found it odd that Momiji was still a rank and file patrol tengu after all these years. The strict caste structure meant she probably couldn’t advance beyond a captain, but she absolutely had the talent to; she was among the most experienced in her division, with years of reliable service and a finely honed sense of judgement. For her to have not been made a captain in spite of her abilities and reputation was odd, and the fact that so many youkai found it odd meant that her abilities were being recognised.

Nobody recognised them quite as much as Aya, who as convinced that Momiji had been born the wrong type of youkai. Had she been a crow tengu, her eyes, nose and attentive disposition would have made her one of the best journalists in the information gathering division. It seemed a shame to leave such talents dormant, and one day, she’d approached Momiji with an offer to ‘give up wasting your time on patrols, and be my cute little assistant instead’.

The speed with which Momiji hit her was matched only by the speed at which Aya hit her back.

That was the first of many scuffles between Aya and Momiji, all of which Aya won. Momiji was talented, true, but she was still simply a lower class of tengu than Aya, who was no slouch herself; she still had the infamous tendency of defeating people by accident when trying to take pictures of their danmaku. It was also the first of many times Aya would try to headhunt Momiji for her newspaper, sometimes through very underhanded means.

The relationship quickly reached a boiling point – on Momiji’s side, at least. Frustrated by her constant losses and dealing with Aya’s recruitment drive, she’d grown more and more bitter about the whole thing until it affected her views of crow tengu as a whole.

Aya, meanwhile, seemed to think it was all great fun. For her, a person attacking her on sight wasn’t exactly a deal breaker – a lot of people did, after all. In fact, she seemed to consider it an adorable character quirk from a subordinate who had no genuine chance of beating her. If anything, it had increased her drive to take Momiji on as an assistant, whether she liked it or not.

Perhaps the reason Momiji stopped over at Nitori’s house so frequently was to avoid running into Aya at the mountain. No one could say. Whatever the case, the crow tengu was not a safe topic of conversation with her around.

That said, Nitori had her own opinions.

The kappa, as a whole, were creative geniuses. Nobody could deny that. But creative genius wasn’t a well that could be drawn from indefinitely. There were many, many kappa who had drunk too deeply and quickly, and found themselves losing the passion to go on. Perhaps they continued to tinker, making a few small improvements here and there, but the spark had left them. It could be reignited, but it took time, it took effort, and it took a stimulus from outside themselves.

As far as Nitori could see, Momiji was just like those kappa. She was going through the motions, attending to her job out of duty rather than passion. She made no great strides in her swordsmanship or her shogi playing, and the calm way she interacted with the world was as much a symptom of indifference as it was experience. She had talent, but no spark, and it seemed she might not even be aware that she’d lost it.

Aya was the one thing that seemed to get a rise out of her. She was the wind of change, the oxygen for the flame. She might not like Aya, but the crow was drawing something out of her that even Nitori couldn’t quite touch.

Their quiet nights spent fishing, drinking and playing were balm for the soul. But they wouldn’t give Momiji back what she was missing. That was what Nitori felt.

But, of course, actually talking about Aya was off-limits. So no matter what Nitori felt about the matter, the best thing to do – the only thing to do – was nothing. Just keep quiet, nod sympathetically, and try to provide as much comfort as was required.

Doing nothing also extended to not telling her that Aya had started to ask about her whenever she got her camera serviced, and seemed to be making excuses to get her camera serviced closer and closer to the times Momiji tended to stop by.

Nitori was a shy and retiring kind of kappa, but she considered herself Momiji’s friend. And friends looked out for your best interests, even if you wished they wouldn’t.

There was a splash from the river, and Momiji’s focused expression turned grim. The rod jerked briefly in her hands. Sighing, Nitori got up and started to set up a fire pit, so they could grill and enjoy their incoming catch.

The sun began to set over Genbu Ravine.

From somewhere beyond the horizon, she could hear the cawing of crows.

Chapter Text

”You look troubled, Sakuya,” Remilia Scarlet declared, spreading her arms magnanimously. “Come. You are my precious servant, so tell me what is on your mind.”

Truthfully, Remilia made this declaration roughly once a month, regardless of whether Sakuya looked troubled or not. It was usually a hint that that Remilia had grown bored, and a cue for Sakuya to invent some problem or another for her mistress to fuss over. Other great youkai kept themselves amused with politics; Remilia preferred to rely on her household to meet her needs.

But on this very rare occasion, Sakuya actually was troubled. She generally wasn’t. She considered herself to be one of the most satisfied people in Gensokyo: well-fed, equipped with a fine uniform, the proud right hand of her mistress and the de facto face of authority in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She had to work hard for her happiness, but she had never expected anything less.

“Very well, my lady,” she replied, bowing her head very slightly. “I believe that there is something amiss with the fairy maids as of late.”

“O-oh? Is it insubordination? Or some manner of insurrection, perhaps?” Remila asked. She took care to lean backwards in her seat, an attempt to cultivate the illusion of a self-possessed lady of the house. Her voice and the flutter of her wingtips betrayed her, however, as they often did.

“I think not, my lady.”

Remilia did not quite breathe a sigh of a relief, but her shoulders relaxed sharply.

Technically speaking, the fairy maids were under Sakuya’s command – but in reality, nobody doted on them more than Remilia herself. Fairies and vampires were both, by nature, childish beings; though she might try to preserve her dignity, she would often make excuses to descend upon them and involve herself in their games. If they were swordfighting with broom handles, then Remilia stood ready and waiting to duel them; if they were painting murals on the courtyard walls, she was there to provide art direction and a critical eye. She covered for them when they snuck snacks from the kitchen, ordered new uniforms when they ripped their own, and for all her posturing, behaved in all ways as less the Lady of the House and more a partner in crime for her brigade of wayward fairies.

As a result, she largely left matters of discipline up to Sakuya, who obliging doled out any punishments with the exceedingly light hand that her lady wished for. Many in Gensokyo questioned why the mansion had so many maids when they did so very little work; few realised that their job was less about cleaning and more about amusing Remilia.

As word got around about the conditions in the mansion, more fairies flocked to join them, and the ranks of the maids swelled with new playmates who quickly learned to appreciate their new mistress just like those that came before them. It helped that fairies very quickly forgot social niceties, and treated Remilia as a friend even though her position should have demanded deference.

The very last thing Remilia wanted to do was spoil the fun by imposing authority herself; having dodged that bullet, she settled down to listen to Sakuya’s story.

“One of the longest serving maids approached me yesterday and asked for a wage,” Sakuya said, the faintest suggestion of a furrow on her perfectly elegant brow. “A wage, specifically. Not regular wages, but a one-time payment.”

The question was: what need could a fairy have for wages? What might they want to buy? Food, perhaps, but the mansion provided snacks for the maids anyway, and they were – in Remilia’s unbiased opinion – much finer than anything you could buy outside. Sakuya’s elegance extended to the kitchen, and she was a particular master of western-style sweets. (This had brought them troubles in and of itself; the priestess of the Moriya Shrine sometimes came by to challenge Sakuya to danmaku battles, with the aim of winning a slice of chiffon cake.)

The vampire rubbed her chin pensively. Fairies rarely got into any major mischief by themselves, but as the Lunarians had recently found out, it was still unwise to underestimate their capacity for sowing havoc. Perhaps this was an excuse to stretch her wings and get involved in an incident again? It had been a while since the last time. Grinning deviously, she stood up, pushed out her chest, and proclaimed –

“My lady, I believe I should deny her request and then tail her for a while,” Sakuya interrupted smoothly. “Of course, I shall report back with my results.”

“Oh. Ah. Yes. See to it,” Remilia replied, deflating. Her bottom hit the chair again with a dejected thud. “You truly are almost too efficient, Sakuya.”

“I live to serve, my lady.”

The maid winked away, gone in the blink of an eye.

Yes, Remilia thought, pouting. Too efficient by far. Her head maid had grown so used to doing all the work that she forgot to leave any for the rest of the house. She sighed, and began to sip her tea.

At least with Sakuya away on business, the remaining maids would be more inclined to play than usual. They’d taken to riding on each other’s shoulders and jousting with mops as of late. After a few moments to figure out a convincing excuse, she got up and went to join them.

A little way outside the human village – far enough that it stood apart, but close enough that it could be safely reached with stubby human legs – an odd shop stood. It had been erected (and he was quite insistent on that word) by Rinnosuke Morichika, half-youkai shopkeeper and unwitting blowhard, as a museum for the bizarre knick-knacks he was pretending to sell.

Each product, in addition to its ticket price, also cost half an hour of your lifetime as he explained, in great detail, his theories about its function and history. Before you handed over your money, he would say: Here, dear customer, is an egg carton, a cardboard palanquin for the transportation of eggs, which he assumed had reached a near-religious level of importance in the outside world if such devices had to be formulated for their comfort. In Gensokyo, there was Buddhism, Shinto, and Tao; outside, there were Eggs, which signified the great cycle of birth and consumption that drove the modern day human.

As Gensokyo’s foremost emporium of outside world tat, the shop received its fair share of customers – that share being zero percent. Kourindou did not have customers. It had loiterers. People would go there, meet up, chat idly together, and look with interest at things they had no particular intention of buying. Kourin’s stubborn philosophy, that there was a right customer for every item and it was simply a matter of waiting until they happened by, had caused him to accidentally invent the modern mall.

Perhaps it was a devious attempt to surround himself with women, since most of his loiterers were female. An equally devious and successful method would be to just go outside, where powerful women teemed in untold numbers. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a powerful woman in Gensokyo. Usually she threw the rock back substantially harder.

Rinnosuke did not consider fairies to be women. Mostly he did not consider them at all, which was why he was consistantly surprised by them sneaking into his attic and spilling juice on his good trousers. He had exactly one set of good trousers, which he hadn’t worn in fifty years and had no plans to wear in future; he was of the firm conviction that a man did not choose to be trousered, and simply became so due to circumstances outside of his control. Nevertheless, he wept bitter tears upon seeing that his best pair had been bespeckled by juice from some fairy’s clandestine picnic. Perhaps he was at fault for leaving them on the floor, or for buying trousers with the distinctive checked pattern of a picnic blanket; none could say, save the fairies, and they would not divulge their secrets easily.

But whether they were women or what they had done to his trousers didn’t matter. A fairy was still a potential customer in Rinnosuke’s eyes. They might not have anything to pay with, and most didn’t really get the whole ‘commerce’ thing until you had explained it to them very slowly once or twice, but that made them no less likely to buy something than anybody else he interacted with.

“Welcome to Kourindou,” he intoned, in a well-practised voice. One might wonder how well-practised it was, considering how few customers he had; the answer was very, because he owned a mirror with which to supplement his training. “Feel free to browse.”

The fairy maid in front of him was, in his opinion, wholly unremarkable. So unremarkable that he had forgotten her face, even having seen it multiple times before. At best, he would have said she was tall for a fairy, although being tall for a fairy was like being fast for a turtle.

But as she approached, nervously glancing around at a particular corner of his shop, he found his memory jogged. Memory, as all scholars know, is deeply connected to scent, and what Rinnosuke smelled was the sweet, sweet aroma of a potential sale.

“Ah, yes. I’ve kept the item you were looking for in reserve, as requested,” he said smoothly. He had even, as a show of magnanimity, dusted it. Dusting was nine tenths of his job, but somehow the things he dusted never stayed that way for long. Truly, a conundrum. “A lovely piece. I’m quite interested to see what you’ll offer for it.”

The fairy maid, whose hair was long enough to hang down over her eyes, shook her head. “U-um… I’m very sorry, but I wasn’t able to get anything… I asked the head maid, but she said she’d have to look into it, so… um… if you could hold the item for just a bit longer, I’d be very grateful…”

Rinnosuke frowned. This was, perhaps, the most well-mannered fairy he had ever met, and that was why it truly pained him to pressure her as he was about to. But she was a customer, and he a merchant; this was the way of the world, two beings fulfilling a purpose set aside for them. In the end, it had to be this way.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, slowly, “but as I’m sure you can appreciate, that would be unfair to my other customers.” Who didn’t exist. “I’ll have to place the item back on display. I do hope you can find something to exchange for it, of course, but if another customer should happen to want it first, then there’s simply nothing to be done.”

The fairy maid, thoroughly instilled with the so-called ‘fear of missing out’ that drove much of the outside world, looked close to tears. His stony merchant’s heart wept for her; if she could at least find something to barter, he would at least give her a deal to be proud of. But he couldn’t simply give his stock away for free.

This, though, was what he lived for. The suspense. The emotion. Would she find something to pique his interest in time, or would her item be lost to another? It was a grand drama, repeated countless times over the ages in every shop, and it never lost its appeal.

The world sneezed.

That was what it felt like, at least – a sudden, sharp jerk as he realised there was now another woman standing there who hadn’t been there before, one who had casually spirited the item from his hands and was looking it over with a critical eye.

“M-Miss Sakuya!” the fairy squeaked.

“Good afternoon. So, this is the item in question, is it?” Sakuya replied, slipping seamlessly into the conversation. “I’d quite like to know its purpose. If you would?”

It took mere moments for Rinnosuke to collect himself. She may have appeared without warning, but the head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion was that most rare of things: a real, bona fide customer who genuinely bought things from him. Admittedly those things had been broken teacups, but a sale had been made, and he had been convinced of the legitimacy of her purchasing power.

“Ah, yes. I’d be delighted to explain,” he said, gently lifting the item from Sakuya’s hands. “This, according to my information, is a well-known example of a vessel of flattery. Please observe the robust cylindrical construction, and the capacious insides; note the exceedingly stable bottom, which I believe to be a feature to resist spills. It is warded against both hot temperatures and cold, for the containment of a multitude of beverages. Finally, we can see the design on the outer wall, a written incantation designed to soothe the recipient’s temper and remind them of the gifter’s fealty on a daily basis.”

“I see.”

“The purpose of this item is to ingratiate oneself to one of higher status, and to fulfil that purpose, it takes the form of something that is used frequently, on a daily basis. It sits at the station of industry, solemnly reminding the recipient of the giver at every glance. It can be used as an apology, as part of a plea for some required privilege, or even as a sign of genuine appreciation. Truly, an extraordinarily useful item.”

His explanation continued on for several more minutes, but in short: he was holding a mug.

It was white, with a thick, sturdy handle and a stout, inelegant construction. The words on the side were ones Sakuya could read only with difficulty; they brought back memories of foggy nights in far off cities, screams beneath the blooming moon…

“I see,” she said at last. “As this maid’s employer, I’m prepared to barter for this item on her behalf.”

The fairy maid squeaked again, but this time at a much more joyful pitch.

“My Lady has has given me the authority to leverage the mansion’s goods as collateral, but I fear that most of our furniture would simply act as clutter in an establishment like this.” Her eyes glinted as she spoke; somewhere between this sentence and the last, she had hit upon a perfectly elegant solution to the issue. Whether she stopped time to rack her brain would be left unsaid. “Instead, I would propose an exchange of labour.”

“Oho?” Rinoosuke asked, his interest piqued.

“As you can see, the one who wants to purchase the item is a maid, and a fairy at that.” She put a hand on the fairy’s back, and gave her a gentle push forward so she was front and centre in the proceedings. “We would be willing to loan you her services for a time in exchange for the item.”

“A fine idea, but… I’m afraid I simply don’t need a maid,” Rinnosuke frowned. There was little to do in this shop except clean; having a maid would leave him bored to tears.

“Of course. But you’re friendly with that black-white witch, are you not? Rumour has it that her home has any number of treasures, but it’s a den of filth and poison too dangerous to explore. Even I would hesitate to enter.” Her eyes glinted again. “But for a fairy, a little danger is simply a temporary inconvenience.”

“I see, I see,” Rinnosuke nodded, immediately picking up the thread of the offer. “In other words… you’ll barter your maid’s services to me, and I can then barter them to Marisa in exchange for a cut of her treasure. I earn myself some good will, and can sleep soundly in the knowledge that her rat’s nest of a house is at least a little closer to being fit to live in.”

Sakura smiled. “Just so.”

“As a trade, there are several junctures at which it could go wrong… but it is interesting. I find your terms agreeable. We have a deal!”

After a cursory handshake, he handed off the item to the fairy, who looked as if she had just been hit by a whirlwind and no longer had any idea which way was up and which was down. A few hours later, she would be presented with Sakuya’s cost for her services: a list of books which may or may not have found their way into Marisa’s home, and which Patchouli was anxious to retrieve.

But she was a fairy, and fairies did not worry for long. Instead, she looked down at the mug in her hands, her prize, and smiled as guilelessly as a child.

“Oh? A gift? And what would fairies have that a vampire like myself would want?”

Remilia made sure to pretend to sneer as she spoke. The fairy maids – a small brigade of them, with Sakuya’s new favourite minion at their centre – could not suppress a shudder as they huddled together.

“Um! We know it’s not much. But we wanted to give you this, for… for being… for being… waaah…” their representative said, before her nerve broke. Instead, she held the cup out in front of her, like a sacrifice to a god.

Sakuya, standing at her mistress’s right hand at always, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I believe you should be able to read the words, my lady, if you search your memory.”

Remilia mouth moved slowly as she read, with some difficulty, the slogan emblazoned on the mug. “World’s… Ah. Ah, I see.” She put her hands on her hips, and tried to affect a charismatic, regal aura. “Well, it is a trifling thing, but I believe I can accept it. We shall put it to use immediately. Sakuya, tea, if you would. The good leaves.”

The fairies cheered as the vampire gently, carefully, took the mug and clutched it to her chest. Sakuya once again smiled.

It would be difficult to find a spot for such a mug to be displayed elegantly among the fine silverware and bone china of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. But she would make do. No doubt her lady would insist on it being given pride of place.

The words on the mug read, in a language that precious few in Gensokyo could read:

World’s Best Boss.

Chapter Text

When Mystia Lorelai started a punk rock band, she never anticipated that dressing her bandmate would be part of her duties.

To be fair, Kyouko could at least put clothes on by herself. That wasn’t the issue. She had a reputation for being just a little clumsy (a reputation that Mystia had deliberately exaggerated, since it formed part of her appeal), but not to that extent. She could also be trusted to take her clothes off without any help at all, particularly if somebody had persuaded her to have a sly beer when she was off-duty.

The real issue was that she had barely any clothes to begin with. She was, after all, a buddhist priest-in-training; luxury was not a calling card of the occupation. While Byakuren was happy for her acolytes to have at least one outfit of their own (or, rather, she had given up telling the wild and free youkai of Gensokyo that they couldn’t), the rest of their wardrobe was typically the robes and vestments you might expect of a temple.

It fell to Mystia to provide an injection of cuteness and rebellion into Kyouko’s sartorial world. It was a grand task, a noble task, but one she was equal to. It was with a solemn expression that she forced her friend to dress up in an endless procession of fanciful outfits; if she just so happened to enjoy it, that was besides the point. If she then asked Kyouko to play waitress at the lamprey stand in exchange for her new duds, that was also besides the point.

Overall, it was an important bonding experience for them. They laughed, they cried. Who did the laughing and who did the crying was sometimes a point of contention, but such was life. But it did introduce some interesting wrinkles into the fabric of their relationship.

For one, Kyouko couldn’t bring her new clothes home with her. The kind of punkified outfits the duo landed on were the kind that would make Byakuren’s love-filled fist land on Kyouko’s head.

The result was that Mystia’s wardrobe was full of Kyouko’s clothes. And, as the wardrobe filled, other little personal items began to make the migration. Little tubes of honey candies that the yamabiko swore were good for sore throats. Strings of beads that had been thrown to (or at) her by fans. A spare pillow and futon for when the set got too rowdy and she needed to sleep over.

It all made Mystia feel a little bit odd about the whole thing. It felt less like they were bandmates, and more like they were moving in together.

Of course, she’d shaken that thought away as soon as she’d had it. After all, they didn’t live together. No matter how tired she was the night before, Kyouko was always gone before Mystia woke up – sneaking back to the temple with the break of dawn. Crawling back to them with bags under her eyes, wagging her tail like she’d done nothing wrong. Probably even thought she was being considerate by not waking up her friend to say goodbye.

Were they even friends, though? It was a valid question. Kyouko’s training kept her too busy to hang out during the day, so it wasn’t as though they spent much time together. But if you looked at it a different way, wasn’t Mystia the one who knew Kyouko best? In Choujuu Gigaku, she saw a side to Kyouko that she’d never show to those snotty Buddhists. Not even to Byakuren. Mystia took a certain pride in that.

Today was one of the rare days where Kyouko had time to spend, and she’d come over to talk about new songs, new outfits, and generally just chatter aimlessly about whatever happened to be in her head at the time.

“You left these here last time,” Mystia said, cutting off a tangent about who in the temple brewed the best tea by thrusting a pair of Kyouko’s underwear at her.

“Wah?! Hey, Mysty! D-don’t just show them around like that!”

“I’m the only one here to see them, dummy. I even washed them for you.”

Kyouko snatched the offending item out of her hands, mumbling something about that ‘not being necessary’. That said, she was clearly pleased to have them back. Like many animal youkai, Kyouko was fond of a strange kind of underwear from the Outside World named ‘boxer shorts’, which had a convenient hole in the back for a tail to poke through. While Mystia didn’t think them a particularly attractive choice, they were apparently very comfortable and easy to wear. But demand for such a trendy item far outstripped supply, and Kyouko only had a few pairs to her name.

According to hearsay from customers at the lamprey stand, the only issue with them was that they generally didn’t come with a bra of any kind. A happy coincidence for those who, like Kyouko, had no pressing need for one.

As for Mystia, she honestly wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. She’d tried them on after she washed them, and found them nowhere near as comfortable as she’d been expecting. Kind of a let-down, really.

“Mysty, you’re knitting your eyebrows again,” Kyouko said, knitting her own eyebrows in kind. “You look stressed out.”

“I am stressed. Your stupid boss keeps tracking me down and chewing me out for being a ‘bad influence’ on you.” Mystia shook her head, irritation flashing in her eyes. “As if it’s any of her business who I talk to! I’m not part of her religion, I can do what I want!”

“Lady Byakuren isn’t stupid.” Kyouko’s voice was reproachful, but she apparently had no objections to the other half. “Here.”

“Kyouko, no. That’s cheating!”

Her objection came too late; Kyouko had already slipped out of her chair and wrapped her arms around Mystia’s shoulders. A soft hum began to emanate from the yamabiko’s body, a gentle vibration that was almost, but not quite, the purr of a cat.

The sound and the sensation were deeply soothing. Healing, almost. No matter how agitated Mystia got, it always seemed to cut away her stress; it was like a knot inside her was being gently shaken apart and dissipated.

In other words, it was a cheap trick. With something like this, even a docile youkai like Kyouko would never lose an argument. Well, at least against somebody who’d let her get within hugging distance. Which more or less just narrowed it down to Mystia herself. That was the worst thing about it. It was a cheap trick that only she fell for, and she had only herself to blame.

“Do you do this for Lady Byakuren, too?” she asked, summoning the last of her irritation for one final jab.

The purring stopped for just a moment. “I don’t think Lady Byakuren needs this kind of thing.”

“She keeps coming to my stall and lecturing me while I’m at work. In front of everyone.”

“I know.”

“And telling all of my customers that they shouldn’t be drinking.”

“I know.”

“But she’s way too strong for me to beat. It’s so frustrating.”

“I know.”

Kyouko knew exactly how Mystia felt about it. But in a way, that was what really stung: that she knew, and it didn’t matter.

To Kyouko, Byakuren Hiriji was simply the most important person in the entire world.

In a way, it wasn’t surprising. Byakuren attracted devoted followers without even thinking about it. She was a religious leader. That was what they did. Even the meanest-spirited of youkai could admit she had a certain charisma, an aura about her. It probably helped that had a motherly side to her. That kind of thing was in demand nowadays.

For Kyouko, it was deeper. She didn’t just admire Byakuren. She didn’t just follow her teachings. She resonated with her. They were both fundamentally kind-hearted. Both serious and dutiful. Both drew an audience when they spoke (for very different reasons.)

But Kyouko was timid, weak, and indecisive. Byakuren wasn’t. When the yamabiko looked at her leader, she was in a sense looking at herself: a stronger, better version of her. An ideal version. The version she should be.

She was an echo youkai, after all. Copying was her nature. She might not be able to transform like a kitsune or a tanooki, but she was still one of Gensokyo’s mimics. Imitation, for her, was the greatest form of flattery, and Byakuren Hiriji was the woman she’d decided to model herself on.

It would never make her happy. Mystia could tell her that straight away. After all, an echo could never be as loud or sharp as the original sound. The best she could aspire to be was only a shadow of what Byakuren was, and she’d be painfully aware of that with every step she took.

Yet, she did it anyway. In her heart, she had already decided: being even half of what Byakuren was would still be better than being what she was now. She continued to walk a path that would lead her toward nothingness, the death of the self.

That was Mystia’s real quarrel with the monk: whether she realised it or not, whether she understood it or not, whether she even wanted it or not, Kyouko belonged to her in a way that Mystia could never hope to compete with. She kept them apart with temple work, lectured them for being together, and was slowly transforming Kyouko into somebody entirely different without even realising it.

Mystia was fighting back, of course – setting up meetings, dragging Kyouko into trouble, and whatever else she could think of. But it wouldn’t work. Just like in a danmaku fight, Byakuren was simply too strong to resist for a small-fry youkai like her.

There was only one thing she had that Byakuren didn’t: Choujuu Gigaku. The spirit of rebellion, the dance of the birds and beasts. When Kyouko got on stage, she wasn’t ‘Kyouko Kasodani, buddhist priest-in-training’; she was Kyouko Kasodani, punk rocker and idol of Gesokyo’s underdogs, howling out her frustrations with the world around her.

She wasn’t copying anyone. There was no-one to copy. She was something entirely new, unseen within Gensokyo’s walls. When Mystia came in with the vocals, they weren’t echoing each other; they were a chorus. Something greater.

The more people saw it, the more they’d know: that was Kyouko. The cute, clumsy girl who kept tripping over her equipment, who didn’t know how to MC to save her life and introduced every set with an ‘um’, who broke her buddhist vows and got drunk with her fans after every show, before Mystia had to step in and carry her to bed… That Kyouko would live on in their hearts. Their memories.

Even if she couldn’t stop anything, Mystia could still chat to them in ten or twenty years, and reminisce. She could enjoy the echo that followed after them, the memory of who her friend used to be.

“Mysty.” Kyouko’s voice floated into her ear; that soothing hum disappeared while she spoke. “Are you crying?”

The night sparrow looked down at her hands, which were balled up tightly on her knees; there were little wet spots on her dress where the tears had fallen. She bit her lip, swallowed, and shook her head.

“I’m not crying,” she lied.

She was losing, but she hadn’t lost yet. Crying would be grieving before the death.

“S-should I teach you a sutra? They always help me calm down...”

“No. Just… keeping doing that humming thing. Please. Just for a little bit longer.”

A sense of frustration. A sense of loss. A sense of longing. They were all stirring around inside her, something bigger than she could contain. Crying was just her feelings leaking out.

Sooner or later, she’d shout them properly. She’d set them to lyrics, craft them into song. Maybe people would think it was another song of protest, but it wouldn’t be. It would be a requiem. A dirge.

She’d give herself to that sound, that music. And become deaf, to all but the song.

Chapter Text

Reimu awakes to a cloudless night.

She rolls over groggily, and checks the time on an old, chunky digital watch that Sanae gave her. It’s solar powered, apparently; it used to be broken beyond repair, but then Okuu picked it up during a banquet once and now she had to keep it wrapped up in a sock because the display was so bright. The digits, once she’s given her eyes time to adjust, read 11:12 PM.

To her, this is interesting but mostly worthless information. She’s the Hakurei Miko; if she wakes up in the dead of night, it’s because she needs to be awake. Her instincts don’t turn off just because she’s in the middle of an afternoon nap, much to her chagrin.

There was no banquet at the shrine tonight, so she doesn’t need to watch her step as she walks. Oftentimes, a late-night trip to the bathroom involves vaulting over the bodies of sleeping youkai. She’s been known to give them a swift kick in the side in passing, but only the ones she knows can take it. (Suika and Remilia are prime targets; Kasen is too alert.)

When she reaches the veranda, somebody is waiting for her.

“Marisa… So you turned up after all.”

“Yep. Sure did.”

It’s an oddly subdued tone for Gensokyo’s shooting star. Marisa without her chipper tone barely feels like Marisa; a witch without a quip might as well be just a girl.

She has left her hat at home tonight. Her hair, messy and frayed, tumbles down her back; she hasn’t bothered to braid it, as she usually does, but set it loose.

Instead of her many different (and equally singed) witch dresses, she’s wearing the same loose, dull clothes as the girls in the human village. Without her hat, without her poofy dress with its pockets full of potions and ill-gotten loot, she looks so much smaller than she ever does during the day. Marisa in bedclothes is a rare and disconcerting experience that only Reimu and Alice can endure with any regularity; the idea of her as small and vulnerable is one they both try to put out of their minds as much as they can.

Sitting beside her are Reimu’s cushion, a bottle of sake, and two cups (one empty, the other half-drunk). The Hakurei Miko sighs, and sits down in the place her friend has set aside for her.

“I see you helped yourself to the good stuff,” she says, picking up the bottle and shaking it a little. She can tell more or less exactly how much is left in it just from that; it seems the witch is still on her first drink.

“Hey, ya can’t get mad. I was the one who gave that to you in the first place.”

“Well, as you can see, I was saving it.”

“Oh yeah? For what?”

Take a wild guess, Reimu thinks grumpily. Does she know how hard it is to keep booze safe? In this place? Or how much trouble she went through to think of a hiding spot that Marisa would find, but nobody else would?

“You’re using my cup, by the way.”

“I am?”

“You know you are. Mine’s the one with the crack in the rim. Hand it over.”

With the hangdog expression of somebody caught red-handed, Marisa hands her the cup. She drains it at a gulp, refills it, and, after a moment of long hesitation, pours for Marisa as well.

Sake cups are something Reimu has an abundance of. They proliferate. Every youkai who tries to wine and dine her has their own, and more often than not they get left behind in the ruckus of the party. Suika sometimes gives them out, in the mistaken belief that everybody cares about drinking as much as she does.

Out of all those, Marisa managed to pick only Reimu’s and her own (helpfully marked by a star doodled on the bottom). To claim she didn’t know she was drinking from the wrong cup after that is so transparent a lie it barely qualifies as a prank.

For a little while, they just drink together. The stars tonight are nothing special, but they’re something to look at that isn’t each other. She takes the next cup more slowly, and the third even slower than that; only then does she feel like Marisa is ready to actually talk.

“So, you pulled your disappearing act again this year?” she asks, in a tone that is almost careless but doesn’t quite get there.

“Yup. Stayed home the whole day. I bet nobody even noticed, ya know?”

Marisa makes a point of not staying at home. Well, anybody would, with a house like hers. She is constantly darting back and forth across the skies of Gensokyo, leaving dazzling contrails across the clouds. She can show up anywhere with no warning at all, and manages to be truly ubiquitous despite being only one person.

But though you might see her every single day, you might talk with her only once in every seven or ten. That was the nature of a busybody witch. Likewise, a day you didn’t see her was nothing out of the ordinary. You’d just been unlucky (or lucky, depending on the perspective).

A day where nobody saw Marisa – a day where she made no social calls, where there was nothing she wanted to borrow or return, where she wasn’t practising her spells and lighting up the sky – was rare enough to be declared an incident by itself… in theory. In fact, it happens once a year. It’s just that no-one ever notices.

Well, nobody except Reimu, anyway.

“I don’t know why you can’t just celebrate your birthday like a normal person, instead of holing up all day and hoping somebody notices,” the miko says sharply.

Marisa, who has been carefully avoiding looking at her the whole time, gives her a sideward glance – trying to figure out if she’s actually annoyed, and if so, how much. The witch’s cheeks are very slightly red; she’s been going through her drinks a bit faster than Reimu herself.

“Well, y’know,” she says evasively.

Reimu’s rebuke is instantaneous. “I don’t, so quit dancing around it and just say it normally.”

For a long moment, Marisa is silent.

Reimu pours herself another drink, unconcerned. She’ll wait as long as she needs to, and Marisa knows it; she’s much more comfortable with lulls in conversation than the witch has ever been.

Eventually, Marisa speaks, and when she does, her tone is slow. Hesitatant. “I guess it’s just, like… Well, birthdays are meant to be a celebration, right? You’re celebratin’ that somebody was born. That they’re alive. I don’t really think anyone’s doin’ that in my case, ya know?”

“Idiot,” Reimu hisses, and punctuates it with a sharp smack in the arm.

Sure, she has a point. Youkai don’t really celebrate birthdays. Most are simply too old to care about their own, and they certainly wouldn’t care about a human’s. Did farmers throw parties for pigs before they butchered them? Maybe some did, but it was a rare show of emotion toward something that was, on a fundamental level, always intended as your dinner. On top of that, celebrating the birth of a girl who kept helping herself to your belongings would have been an odd move for anybody.

Ordinarily, your family would do that kind of thing, but whatever had happened between Marisa and her parents was between them and them alone. Reimu had never asked, and she never would. The Hakurei miko had to have some level of impartiality, which would have meant she’d be forced to listen to both sides, and she had no intention of listening to the people who’d made Marisa run away to the Forest of Magic, a dangerous place no human should tread.

But there was still one person who was glad Marisa was born.

“Who the hell do you think I am, idiot?” she seethes. “Did you just forget I exist or something?”

“Nah. That’s why I turn up here every year,” the witch replies peacefully. “Dang, spilled my drink when you punched me. Wasting booze always sucks.”

“Lick it off the floorboards if it bothers you,” Reimu sighs. Usually, she’d be the one fretting about spilled sake, but it’s not important to her right now. “Well, it’s still technically your birthday, so what do you want for your present?”

“You’re givin’ me a present?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

“There ain’t much at this shrine to really give away, though.”

“If that’s how you feel, why don’t you make a donation?”

“Whoops, left my wallet in my other skirt.”

“That’s what I thought. Better choose your gift carefully, then. You can have whatever you want.”

The witch kicks her legs over the edge of the veranda. They’re bare and pale in the moonlight; she looks almost carefree, which means she’s thinking very carefully about what to say next.

“You shouldn’t be makin’ that kind of offer, Reimu,” she says at last. Her eyes are resolutely glued to the night sky. “What if I asked for a kiss or somethin’?”

“You won’t,” Reimu says immediately.

She doesn’t know why she knows that – only that she does, with absolute confidence. Her brain still goes through the motions of trying to catch up with her gut instinct, however. Maybe it’s because, when Marisa kisses her –

Wait. She shakes her head, sending her hair flying everywhere.

Rephrase that. When and if Marisa kisses somebody, not specifically her, she’s almost certain it will happen without warning. That Marisa will ‘steal’ the kiss. Because, after all, everything the witch ‘borrows’, she intends to return. It’s almost an IOU. Like a contract, but for a relationship. What do they call those again? Doesn’t matter.

“You alright over there? You just started shakin’ your head for no reason,” Marisa says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Reimu says, shrugging it off.

Of course, she’s being ridiculous. In the strictly hypothetical scenario that it happened, it wouldn’t happen like that at all. She’s the Hakurei Miko, after all. Her instincts would let her know it was coming, and she’d get the drop on her. Obviously it was somewhat worrying to think that ‘hey, kiss your best friend RIGHT NOW’ was an instinct she had inside herself, but it felt a lot more plausible than the alternative.

“Hmm… Lemme stay over tonight and tomorrow, then.”

You stay over all the time anyway! Reimu wants to say, but holds her tongue. “Dressed like that? What if some youkai sees you when you’re out of your witch costume?”

“Just don’t let anybody in, then.”

“You’re so troublesome, you know that?”

She picks up the bottle to pour herself a drink, but it feels distressingly empty. It makes her feel like an idiot. It was good booze, but she was so focused on the conversation that she barely tasted it. With a grimace, she pours the last measure into Marisa’s cup, and stares morosely at what’s left in hers.

“Cheers,” Marisa says, and downs her cup at a gulp. Then, with surprisingly quick hands for someone with so much booze in her, she snatches Reimu’s cup and downs that too. She makes sure to smack her lips obnoxiously when she’s done. “Mm, good stuff.”

“You’d better buy me a bottle to replace it.”

“Sure, sure,” the witch says, a little of her usual easy-going charm returning to her voice. If she wants to sound casual, it probably means she’s nervous. That’s what Reimu’s gut is telling her. “Hey, Reimu?”

“What?” she asks flatly.

“You think I can share your futon tonight? Y’know, as part of my present.”

“Get lost. One birthday, one present.”

“Right. Guess this shrine’s a bit too humble to be giving out more than that, huh?”

“If it bothers you, then donate! Geez. You ate some of my chestnut the other day, too, didn’t you? Don’t think I didn’t notice!”

They carry on bickering as they tidy up the cups and cushions, and start laying out the futons. Despite her protests, Reimu at least lays out their futons next to each other. She can do that much.

Marisa’s gait is just a bit unsteady as she leaves the room to go and change. She has a spare set of pyjamas at the shrine, for the same reasons she has a set of bedding and her own dedicated cushion. The last thing Reimu sees before the closes the sliding door is Marisa’s back, still covered by waves of golden hair.

Marisa’s birthday. It’s the one day a year she lets her hair down. That she lets herself be quiet, and vulnerable, and lonely, like any other girl. The one day she’s content to sit and look at the stars, instead of chasing them.

“You really are such a bother,” Reimu huffs to nobody in particular as she turns out the light. A little while afterwards – clothes take longer to figure out when you have the best part of a bottle in you – she hears Marisa slip into the futon next to hers.

Thinking about it, she might have laid them out a bit too close. In fact, she put them so close together that they’re basically touching.

So when Marisa rolls over into her futon, she generously pretends not to notice. Since it was her mistake in the first place, after all.

Happy birthday. I’m glad you were born, idiot.

Sharing a futon is much more comfortable than she expected.

But not enough that she won’t yell about it, come the morning.

Chapter Text

There was a rumour going around Gensokyou that, contrary to the outside world, looks could indeed kill.

It was, of course, entirely false. True, there was an abundance of ferocious youkai with equally ferocious glares, and if you found yourself on the receiving end of one then death was quite likely in the cards. But correlation was not equal to causation, and the glare itself was a symptom of impending doom rather than the cause of it.

Besides, as was pointed out by renowned youkai experts, a youkai that could kill by looking at you wasn’t actually all that scary, relatively speaking. The really dangerous youkai could punt you over the boundary of life and death without ever having clapped eyes on you. That said, if you could hypothetically kill somebody with a particularly venomous scowl, the look that Momiji Inubashiri gave her superior in that moment would not only have killed him, but would have skinned him afterwards for good measure.

“You approved the transfer? Why?” she asked, a growl mounting in her throat. A deep, bassy growl was one of the privileges of being born a white wolf tengu, and she was not at all opposed to abusing it.

Her supervisor held up his empty palms despairingly. “Inubashiri, you know why. Shameimaru submits these transfer requests every few days, and she’s been doing it for years. She orders the forms in bulk. She’s not going to stop. It’s a huge waste of our time and resources.”

His tone was measured. Reasonable, even. But beneath his politeness, between the lines of the words he chose, there was something else unsaid: There comes a point where that time and those resources outweigh the value of your service.

There was a moment of angry silence during which it distantly occurred to her that, not only did she happen to have a very sharp sword on her person, she had never once lost to this particular superior in a training bout. Apparently the same thought occurred to him as well, because he was suddenly in a great hurry to carry on speaking.

“Look, Inubashiri. I know you don’t want to work with her. But look at it this way: this is an opportunity to get her to leave you alone for good,” he went on, as he knew how. “There’s a two week cooling off period for new transfers, so all you need to do is deliberately screw up the job so she doesn’t keep you on at the end.”

To her superior’s great concern, Momiji’s scowl grew deeper.

Regardless of her feelings towards Aya, Momiji was a proud white wolf tengu, and a plan that hinged on pretending to be incompetent was fundamentally loathsome to her. The crow tengu and the higher ups looked down on the patrol tengu to start with, so why would she give them even more to an excuse to laugh at her division? In fact, unlike the powerful but flighty crows, patrol tengu prided themselves on being reliable and competent. A scheme like this ran completely counter to those values.

There was always the option of just picking so many fights that Aya couldn’t take it any more, but that seemed like a poor plan of action. Physical violence hadn’t stopped the reporter from bothering her before; in fact, it seemed to do nothing but pique her interest. She honestly wondered whether Shameimaru was some kind of masochist.

But…

The paperwork was already signed. She’d already been transferred. To do nothing was to remain in a losing position. If she needed to scheme and connive to get herself out of this mess, that was simply what she must do.

“Understood,” she said at last, and turned on her heel.

“Inubashiri, wait a moment. I understand that you’re frustrated–”

“With all due respect, I’m no longer under your command. I need to prepare for my new posting, so please excuse me.”
A shiver ran down his spine. The words were civil, but the tone was ice cold; even if the plan worked and she came back to his division, she wasn’t going to forget that he put her in this position.

And if the plan didn’t work… well. She’d technically be a newspaper tengu, which were above the patrol tengu in rank.

In shogi, one could drop a piece captured from the opponent back onto the battlefield, and control it as their own. Had he just sacrificed a valuable pawn and allowed her to be promoted into a dangerous enemy?

He realised his blunder too late. In life as in shogi, a move could not be taken back once committed to. His once-loyal subordinate had already departed, slamming the door behind her; even if Momiji Inubashiri returned, her loyalty never truly would.

“Inubashiri, reporting for duty.”

For anybody who wasn’t looking, it was a perfectly professional greeting. Maybe Momiji’s tone was a little terse, a little flat, but that was understandable; generally speaking, patrol tengu were discouraged from chatting on the job, and many of them could come off unsociable in their day-to-day lives after a few years in that environment.

But anybody cursed with the ability to see could tell she was about two wrong words away from throwing hands. The scent of impending danger rolled off her in waves; every motion, every stiff little twitch of her tail, foretold swift and immediate violence in her near future.

Thankfully (?), Aya and Momiji’s spats were a semi-regular occurrence on Youkai Mountain, and few tengu were stupid enough to stay in the immediate blast radius. All through the Youkai Mountain Canteen, people were picking up their trays and sidling towards the nearest piece of cover. Unfortunately, as it was mostly benches and open air stands – crow tengu were quite fond of watching the slowly falling autumn leaves while they ate – there was still a non-zero chance of civilian casualties.

Aya herself merely blinked, a baked sweet potato halfway to her mouth and a mess of paper spread out on the table in front of her.

“You, uh, what now?” she asked.

“I’ve been transferred, and will be serving as your aide as of today.” She kept her tone level, but her eyes could have nailed a bird to the wall. “I’m told the transfer was at your direct request, and am led to believe you’ve requested this multiple times.”

This was apparently such a shock to Aya that she nearly choked on her baked potato, which would have been a fitting punishment for trying to sneak in bites during a serious discussion. “Sure, but I wasn’t expecting them to actually do it. Ayayaya… Just how dumb is your division head?”

“If you didn’t think they’d do it, then why waste everybody’s time requesting it so much?” the wolf tengu asked archly. Her professional tone had already disappeared, like alcohol at an oni’s banquet.

“I thought they’d just do the smart thing and promote you, obviously. Anyone can put in a transfer request for a random patrol tengu, but I can’t exactly scoop up a captain, right?” Aya shook her head in disbelief, flicking the pom-poms on her hat as she did. “Guess I can’t complain since I got a cute assistant out of the deal, but I really don’t know what the higher ups are thinking…”

“Don’t call me cute if you value your neck, Shameimaru.”

Aya snorted. “I can’t exactly help it, my dear Momiji. As Gensokyo’s most trustworthy source of news, I’m honour -bound to report the facts as I find them.”

“Trustworthy? I thought reporters wrote headlines, not punchlines. And it’s ‘Inubashiri’ to you.”

“Is it, now?” Aya asked, tilting her head and putting an index finger to her cheek. “As your new boss, I think I’m going to veto that suggestion. I think I’d like to call you Momiji instead.” A smug grin began to play on her lips. “Now, what do you say when your boss asks you for something, Momiji?”

“Die in a hole,” Momiji snarled, and swung.

She knew that fighting Aya was a bad idea.

Not only was Aya simply a higher class of tengu than she was, but the lying crow was one of the best fighters in the tengu ranks, with centuries of experience under her belt. Her ability to manipulate the wind and her incredible speed were also more directly useful in a fight than Momiji’s own clairvoyance.

In fact, it could be said that Aya was a natural counter to Momiji, in that she could simply move faster than the eye could fathom. Even if you could see her, she wasn’t really there. It was just an after-image of where she had been. Momiji’s sole unique talent, her sight, couldn’t be trusted against Aya.

She knew all that. She understood it. Was she not a shogi player, a strategist? Could she not recognise a losing engagement when she saw one? But ultimately, it didn’t matter what cold logic said in the heat of the moment. All she wanted was to knock that smug, condescending look off the bird’s face, and the quickest way to do it was to break her nose.

Her fist hit something, and she almost rejoiced. Even landing a hit was rare enough to be a victory. But she didn’t feel satisfying crack of a jaw against her knuckles; instead, it was the merely the side of Aya’s tokin hat, blow off by a sudden movement.

That was about as much as Momiji registered of the fight before Aya, who had ducked under her arm and stolen into her instep, hit her in the stomach so hard she felt like she’d been stabbed with a knife. Suddenly fighting was out of the question, and just not throwing up became the order of the day.

“Ayaya. What a helpless little underling. I guess that’s what makes you cute, though.”

Momiji seethed as she fought for breath, but was rudely interrupted from her boiling rage by Aya grabbing her by the ear and yanking her upright, wholly ignoring her body’s natural inclination to fold in on itself like an accordion to protect her vulnerable stomach.

“Well, all this excitement has used up all of our lunch break, so I think it’s time we head back to the office,” Aya said theatrically. Then, with a sly look on her face, she asked: “Now, my cute little assistant, will you walk, or do I have to drag you all the way to work?”

“I’ll walk,” Momiji spat. “Get your hands off me.”

“Oh? But you were so eager to get your hands on me. Oh well.”

Momiji felt angry enough to spit blood, but her only choice was to meekly follow. This was simply the opening sortie in what was sure to be the worst two weeks in her long, long life.

“Well, we’re here. This is Bunbunmaru Headquarters!” Aya declared, before adding wryly: “Of course, I live here as well.”

Momiji looked the building up and down, and wondered if she was meant to be impressed. It was no different from any of the other houses-cum-newspaper-offices that they’d passed on the way; they seemed to sprout from the sides of the mountain like mushrooms in the Forest of Magic.

As a general rule, newspaper tengu seldom worked together on their papers. Most found that once they tasted the unfettered freedom of their own newspaper, written in their own style and expressing things with their own voice, they were loathe to let anybody else interfere with their creative process.

The result was that there were almost as many individual newspapers as there were tengu to write them. Most attracted only niche readerships, and seemed to Momiji to be an exercise in how to waste time and energy. Most of these budding journalists produced their new papers in their own homes, and Aya was no exception.

By contrast, patrol tengu like Momiji generally lived communally in the barracks. Higher ranks might have a desk or even a room to themselves, but the rank and file would eat, sleep and bathe together on a day-to-day basis. Since patrol tengu were disproportionally wolf-types, most of them appreciated the sense of community the lifestyle afforded, as well as the feeling of being part of the pack.

“Well?” Momiji asked. “Are we going in, or are we just going to stand here and look at it all day?”

“Ayaya. You’re such an impatient little puppy,” Aya quipped back, but her grin was just a little lopsided. “Actually, there was something I meant to say.”

“So say it. Stop wasting time.”

“Well, as much as I’m happy to have a cute little assistant, I wasn’t really expecting them to sign the paperwork.”

“You said that already.”

“So… I wasn’t expecting to really have anybody else come into my office, at all.”

“And?”

“So I haven’t really had time to make things… as presentable as I might want them to be when I’m showing around my new junior. Just a bit of a warning for you.”

Momiji rolled her eyes. A typical line for a house-proud owner – saying a house wasn’t presentable when it was perfectly tidy, just to imply that there was some rarefied state of aesthetic perfection in which it was usually kept. When she opened the door, she did it in the full expectation of a tidy room.

She had made two miscalculations.

The first was that, contrary to Momiji’s opinion on the matter, Aya rarely told a lie outright. She might stretch the truth, but the truth was always there somewhere under the layers of sensationalism.

The second was that, although exaggeration was Aya’s stock-in-trade, this by by no means disqualified her from making the occasional tactical understatement.

The room was not tidy. It was not even untidy. It was a disaster area. As soon as the door opened, the smell of stale alcohol and that particular aroma unique to birdcages flooded out to assault Momiji’s sensitive nose. A little cot had been stuffed away in the corner, as though the owner was ashamed of it, and was surrounded by empty bottles of sake and ginseng energy medicine from the Eientei clinic. Stray feathers were strewn across the floor, where the floor could even be seen; in many places it had been completely hidden by leaves of discarded notepaper, or clothes carelessly discarded and left where they fell. The edges of the room were ringed by boxes or precarious towers of paper, sometimes strung up into bundles for easier stacking.

At the far end of the room, nearest to the only window, was a desk stacked high with research materials, half-finished manuscripts and bottles of ink. In front of it was a rickety wooden stool, much too low to sit comfortably on. There was no kitchen, no pots, no pans; there was no evidence anybody had ever cooked in this place.

“Well, here we are,” Aya said grimly. “Home sweet home.”

“This isn’t a home. This is a sty. You live like a pig.” There was a note of accusation in Momiji’s tone, but also genuine wonder; she thought worse of Aya Shameimaru than almost anybody else she knew, but even she had thought the crow was… well, functional. This was not the office of a woman who was coping properly. It was the office of a woman hanging on by her fingernails.

“Ayaya… well, I can’t disagree. You see, I tried out a new publishing style from the outside world recently. I thought it’d cut down on research time and let me attract new viewers with less workload, but it ended up being a total bust, and I had to shelve the whole thing.” She scratched her nose bashfully, as if speaking about a cooking project that had backfired. “But after I spent all that time on a non-starter, I ended up falling behind on my deadlines, and, well, I haven’t quite managed to get back on top of them. It’s not like I don’t see the mess. I just don’t have time to clean it, and the longer I go, the more time cleaning it will take.”

Momiji shook her head, bewildered. “So take a day off and get it done. Don’t you crows always brag about being your own boss? You can go without putting out a newspaper for one day, surely.”

“Ayayaya… That’s a cute way of looking at things.” Aya’s grin was a little mocking, but still wry and bitter. “I wouldn’t say I’m my own boss, Momiji. I’m just the boss of my own newspaper. There are still people up the chain who can push me around, and for them, my paper is a nice little bubble of influence they can exploit. I can’t just up and miss an edition without catching trouble from them.”

“Tch.” Even as Momiji tutted, she didn’t have any response. She was used to being put in unenviable situations by her own superiors, after all – this being one of them.

Aya broke the silence by cracking her knuckles, and picking a slightly serpentine path towards her desk. “Well, I have to get to work. I managed to gather some lead-ins for today’s stories, but I still need to write them up, proof them, do the typesetting, run the whole thing down to the printing house, then go out and grease some wheels with people so they don’t cause problems… all that stuff.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Ayaya… well, that’s the funny thing, Momiji. I don’t actually have anything for you to do.”

“What? You don’t think I’m good enough to work with you?” Momiji asked flatly.

“Frankly? No. Listen, Momiji. All these jobs I’m doing? They have to be done perfectly, and because of how short I am on time, they’ve gotta be done first try. I know you’re not an idiot, but what kind of boss expects you to walk into a new task and be perfect from day one, with no training? And it would be with no training, because I don’t have time to train you.”

The exhaustion in Aya’s voice was too great to hide. Momiji glanced over at her bed, and found herself noticing that the bottles of energy medicine outnumbered the bottles of sake by a significant margin.

“Surely I could at least deliver the finished manuscript to the printing houses,” she offered.

“I wish. See, they don’t print newspapers first come, first served. They order it based on how much they like you, and how much you’ve bribed them in the past. If you showed up out of the blue, they’d put you at the back of the stack for sure. We’d have a late edition even if we gave it to them first thing in the morning.”

Momiji felt a growl forming in her throat. “That’s corrupt.”

“Sure. I hate it as much as you do. But how do you go about exposing that kind of corruption? If you even tried, you’d never get another newspaper in print again. So, we just have to live with it.”

“Isn’t there any way you could save time? Surely there must be some kind of corner you can cut.”

“There is, but… ahaha. You’ll like this, Momiji. The only places I can cut corners are the interviews, the research, or the writing. You know, the bits that are actually important. The bits of the job I actually enjoy.”

She flashed Momiji a crooked smile. Once, Momiji thought, that smile would have been full of bravado. It would have been a devil-may-care, “I’ll get through this anyway!” kind of smile. Almost heroic, in a sense.

But right here, right now, that smile felt battered. It limped. There was no winning for a smile like that; the only possible victory was pyrrhic. It was the smile of somebody who’d decided to go down with the ship.

“So, that’s just about where I’m at. I can only get back on track by sacrificing the bits of my paper that I don’t want to lose. Even though I’ve got an assistant, I’m too short on time to teach you the work. I’m trapped. I guess you’d say I’m in check, right? That’s how it is in shogi? I never get time to play, personally.” She grinned again, as if smiling would take the edge off her own honesty. “You can go and do whatever, Momiji. I didn’t really want to drag you in as an assistant anyway, so I’ll let you go at the end of the trial period with no fuss. That’s what you want, right? Just think of it as two weeks of holiday, and maybe pretend you’re gathering leads for me or something so it looks good.”

Momiji said nothing for a long moment. The scratching of Aya’s pen, already in fluid motion, filled the air.

“Ridiculous,” the wolf said at last. “This is why I can’t stand you.”

“Huh? I thought I was being pretty nice, you know?”

“Regardless of anything, I’m a white wolf tengu. I came here to do a job. Leaving without working would be an insult to my pride,” she snarled. “First, I’m going to clean this dump. If you’ve got anything you don’t want burned, point it out now. And when you’re done with newspaper work, make sure you think of something I can do tomorrow. You owe me that much.”

She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. At the barracks, everybody was responsible for keeping things tidy, so she wasn’t any stranger to cleaning. Or, unfortunately, picking other people’s underwear up off the floor. Aya’s office was more of a wreck than most, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.

“Well… I suppose if you’re offering… I don’t suppose you could head to the bamboo clinic and pick up some more of that energy medicine when you’re done? It’d sure save me a trip.”

“Hmph. I always thought that stuff was supposed to treat impotence.”

“Ayaya… Does it matter? One way or another, it keeps you up all night. That’s the important thing.”

The back and forth as Momiji cleaned was not what would could call friendly, but it was there, and sometimes it wasn’t even unpleasant. It wasn’t the reassuring background chatter of the patrol tengu, but she would work with it, and that surprised her.

For a moment – just a moment – she allowed herself to hope that the next two weeks wouldn’t be as miserable as she’d feared.

Chapter Text

Sanae Kochiya had a problem.

The rest of Gensokyo didn’t think so. The rest of Gensokyo thought she had a pet. Tsukasa Kudamaki, kuda-gitsune of ill repute, had availed herself of Sanae’s hospitality, and the two had quickly grown inseparable. Supposedly it was an equal and equitable partnership, but that kind of thing didn’t really happen in Gensokyo. They barely even knew what one was. But they did know what a master-servant relationship was, and right now they were trying to work out who was who.

Sanae also didn’t think she had a problem. She thought she had a friend, and it was exactly the kind of friend she’d been looking for. Reimu and Marisa were fine. They were great, even. But they acted about ten years older than they were, with all their drinking and sarcastic quips and being on the other side of a major religious conflict, and it was hard to get the kind of wholesome, youthful bonding she needed as a pseudo-modern girl. Where were the sleepovers? Where was the sharing each other’s lip balm and hanging out for inordinate amounts of time at food establishments? When would they get around to giggling and vaguely alluding to their crushes even though everybody already knew who the crushes were?

Tsukasa gave her those things. Maybe she rolled her eyes a little and didn’t seem to really understand the point, but she was enough of a saleswoman to at least play the game in hopes of seeing what the prize would be. Nobody else in Gensokyo bothered. It satisfied a primal need that existed in Sanae, and had existed before she even left the modern world, when she was watching her social life dry up as caring for the shrine took more and more of her time.

In fact, the only person who really believed Sanae had a problem was Tsukasa, because she had resolved to be that problem. She was a manipulator a kuda-gitsune. She took the people she met and gently escorted them down the road to ruin. That was who she was, and she had no intention of changing that. Sanae, to her, was gullible. A useful idiot. A mark.

But somehow, even though Sanae seemed perfectly happy to let herself be exploited, it never quite seemed to work out.

Tsukasa had resolved to start small. First, she’d go for Sanae’s store of cosmetics. She seemed to care much more about them than any girl in Gensokyo did, because of her ‘modern sensibilities’, and they represented a weakness for Tsukasa to exploit. After all, they couldn’t have come cheap. By winnowing away her host’s assets, she’d make her position weaker in the future, and easier to exploit.

“May I use this?” she’d asked, lifting a random bottle from Sanae’s bedside table and dangling it between her thumb and forefinger. The milky contents inside sloshed ominously.

“Ah! Of course! You don’t even need to ask!” the priestess had gasped, clapping her hands together in excitement. “Here, let me show you how to apply it!”

At the time, Tsukasa had found it hard to keep a devious grin from forming. Not only had she gotten permission for this bottle, but she’d gotten blanket permission to dip into any bottle she pleased without asking! Truly, Sanae was a fool. She couldn’t have imagined a better outcome.

It was a sense of triumph that lasted for a colossal seven seconds before she realised that Sanae was marching her in the direction of the shower and was tugging insistently at the laces of her one-piece dress, and then started insisting that they go in together and that it was fine because she was showing her how to use the hair treatment and it was just skinship and she’d never been able to ask Reimu to do anything like this, and it was about the time that the water turned on that Tsukasa realised the situation was absolutely out of her control and had been the entire time.

She was forced to endure for a whole half an hour as Sanae gently massaged hair treatment into her scalp and the base of her ears and the entire length of her tail, making sure to work it in properly all the way to the base. Sanae, she learned, quite liked her tail; she thought it was fluffy and glossy and had been wanting to stroke it but didn’t know how to ask, and had any number of compliments for it even though Tsukasa was quite sure that, at this point in time, it smelled of wet fur and made her look like a drowned rat. She was forced to stare demurely at her own feet because she didn’t want to look at Sanae, and she didn’t want to look at Sanae because Sanae was from the outside world and by god they built their women differently out there.

By the time she got out and had been allowed to wrap herself in a towel for the night (actual clothes were apparently not on Sanae’s agenda), the heat from the shower and the constant praise and the gentle touches had left her flushed and exhausted. Her host, however, seemed to have more energy than ever, and had marched her back to her room to teach her about lip gloss and nail varnish and how to dry her fur off without getting her tail full of static. The evening wore on. Sanae’s smile never diminished.

When she woke up in the morning, Tsukasa looked and smelled better than she ever had before. Her muscles felt soft and relaxed, and the sheen of her tail surprised even her. But she felt a palpable sense of defeat as she dragged herself to the breakfast table.

Suwako, venerable curse goddess of the shrine and lover of frogs, had taken a glance at her, patted her arm comfortingly, and said: “Hang in there, champ.” There was absolutely no malice in the gesture, but somehow it made her feel infinitely worse.

She could not, for the life of her, work out what had gone wrong. On paper, her plans had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. She’d manipulated her host, hadn’t she? She’d used up their assets, hadn’t she? And she’d gotten an open invitation to do it again.

But here she was, sitting at Sanae’s table with her painted toes and eating rice with Sanae’s family, with the very distinct feeling that she’d definitely lost in some way.

“Ah, look at your tail! It looks so glossy now that we’ve cleaned it and brushed all the tangles out!” Sanae cooed when she woke up. “You should definitely keep using that treatment. Or maybe some hair oil… hm…”

As a last ditch effort to make herself feel better, Tsukasa had popped the question. “I’d like to, but… ahem. I’m worried about how much I’d be using. How much do they cost, might I ask?”

To her horror – her absolute and uncontainable horror – Sanae shrugged.

“They’re not real hair treatments, since those are from the outside world,” the wind priestess explained regretfully. “Marisa makes these ones for me. I won most of them in spellcard duels, and I traded her for some of them, but… she just wanted random junk. They still work, though! They’re just not the same as the ones I used to use…”

Tsukasa’s reaction was to slump forward and practically dunk her face into her morning rice. She’d been afraid Sanae would scold her for wasting food, but the Moriya Shrine was a place of plenty; instead, the miko spent her time picking individual grains of rice from Tsukasa’s cheek and eating them, giggling and claiming ‘she’d always wanted to try it’.

That was her first attempt to take advantage of Sanae’s kindness, and it was, for all intents and purposes, a truly immense failure – as was every attempt that came after it. There was just something about her. Even when on paper, in theory, Tsukasa should have been getting one over on her, it always felt like Sanae came out on top. Without ever calling her out for her manipulations, without ever even really trying. Tsukasa asked and Sanae gave, and somehow Sanae was the winner. How did that work? Sanae didn’t even seem to know she was winning, and that was what annoyed Tsukasa the most.

It drew her in and trapped her, until she’d forgotten why she was taking refuge at the Moriya Shrine in the first place. This time, she told herself, she’d ‘win’. And if she didn’t win now, she’d win the next time. Sooner or later, it had to happen.

But in the meantime, her fur was becoming glossier. Her belly was kept fed, and her nails kept painted; Gensokyo was becoming used to seeing her on Sanae’s arm, being kept busy and harmless by her attentions. Sanae’s smile kept getting wider.

In summary: just like Hakurei miko with her chestnut yokan, Tsukasa Kudamaki had a problem. And she had no idea how to stop.

Chapter Text

Aya Shameimaru liked to think of herself as a fairly responsible and capable member of youkai society.

Most other members of youkai society would contend that it didn’t really matter what Aya liked to think. But most other members of youkai society would also lose a fight with Aya Shameimaru, and anyway, they were wrong. She was, after all, the sole owner of a thriving newspaper business. She had an office. She even had an employee.

What to actually do with that employee was a very interesting question, to which Aya had yet to find an answer. Momiji was technically her assistant, but neither of them were actually sure what an assistant did. Assist, presumably. But with what?

Momiji had no relevant skills for writing a newspaper, and frankly, Aya hadn’t anticipated the transfer going through in the first place. Her plan had been to nudge the higher ups into actually promoting somebody, since making Momiji a captain would immediately put her out of Aya’s reach and stop her harassment.

She’d picked Momiji because Momiji would excel as a captain. Everybody who worked with her thought so, and Aya agreed. She was serious, dutiful, and unafraid to throw hands with opponents even if they were stronger than her. The higher ups would get themselves a wonderful new employee, and Aya would get to quietly make the point that they should consider promoting other particularly skilled individuals into higher positions. Like, perhaps, her.

That was the plan, anyway. But then Momiji’s captain had made the knuckle-headed decision to actually approve the transfer, and now she had a cute but mostly useless assistant who hated her guts. The plan had backfired, nobody was happy, and mistakes had been made.

But she could still salvage things. All they had to do was make it through the trial period with no incidents. She could claim that she and Momiji were just too opposed in personality to work well together (a very tactical understatement) but that her work had been acceptable, and send her back to her patrol duties. The temporary ‘promotion’ would still be seen as a success, and other tengu would start wondering why they weren’t being considered for a trial run at greatness. It would at least stir the pot and get conversation flowing on the topic.

Since it didn’t actually matter what Momiji did in her role as an assistant, Aya had made the executive decision to let her do whatever she wanted – as long as it looked like she was working, things would be fine.

So for the third day in a row, Momiji Inubashiri walked into an office where nothing was expected of her, and for the second day in a row, she used Aya’s perfunctory morning greeting as an opportunity to ram a full roll of bread into the reporter’s open maw.

Not many employees, on their third day of work, would think to volley bread into their employer’s gullet. It was an innovation in workplace politics that would only suggest itself to a strategist of Momiji’s level, and had many advantages.

The first was the outside possibility that Aya could choke, preferably to death. Would a youkai truly be slain by such a thing? Was there enough meaning in it? Momiji didn’t know, but a jumped-up pigeon choking to death on a crust of bread was ironic enough to be worth a shot.

The second was that while Aya could eat, breathe and swallow, she couldn’t do all three at the same time. With her mouth full, Momiji began each day with a few moments of blessed silence.

“You were going to skip breakfast again,” she snarled accusingly, stalking into the office. “Eat three meals a day like a normal person, you degenerate.”

Aya shrugged, and placidly chewed her enforced breakfast. She had actually fallen into the habit of eating only once a day as of late, chained to her workdesk as she was, and this was apparently a grave sin in Momiji’s personal cosmology. Those who did not work did not eat, but those who could not eat could not work: such was the wisdom of the patrol tengu. She seemed to find it personally offensive that Aya was trying to crunch her deadlines without giving her body adequate nourishment, and had dedicated herself to violently correcting the problem.

She was also very adamant on the subject of baths. Aya mainly made do with zipping through cloudbanks at high speed and rinsing herself under waterfalls as she made her rounds, but this too was verboten under the iron law of Inubashiri.

“Sore muscles lead to a dull mind. Even pencil-pushing photographers need to take care of their bodies to work effectively,” the wolf had lectured the night before. “Besides, my nose can barely tolerate your stink. I’m taking you to the public baths to soak.”

“Sorry, puppy. Your wonderful boss has to schmooze with some people tonight, or I won’t have leads for tomorrow, so no can do.”

“Blow them off. I’ll get you a lead myself.”

Considering the information gathering potential of Momiji’s clairvoyence, it was too good an offer to refuse. So she had begrudgingly agreed to spend her evening leisurely soaking in a wonderful hot bath, occasionally preening her feathers (which had lately grown quite dull) and watching her assistant quietly seethe about the differences in their proportions. It was honestly one of the best evenings she’d had in quite some time.

At some point Momiji had taken a break from calling her a chicken (“all breasts and thighs with a tiny brain”) to point out one of the great tengu relaxing on the other side of the baths.

“You wanted a lead, right? That one’s talking about setting up an accident as an excuse to garnish their division’s stipend,” the wolf said, scowling. Patrol tengu, typically speaking, were ‘paid’ in various sundries for their services, rice being chief among them. A reduced stipend would mean lean months for the division in question. “He does the same thing every half a year or so.”

“You can hear what they’re talking about?” Aya asked. Most great tengu had some control of wind magic, and it was common for them to use it to make it difficult to hear what they were speaking about outside a foot or so of where they were. It was a cheap trick that Aya could easily have dispelled, but not without tipping off her targets.

The wolf snorted. “I’m lip-reading, obviously. I’d be an idiot not to learn how, with eyes like mine.”

Aya fought the urge to reach for her notebook, which thankfully she had remembered not to bring into the bath this time. Lip-reading was hardly a hundred percent reliable as proof, but it was definitely something she could follow up on. Even if she couldn’t dig up any definite proof, it was still a little grist to add to the rumour mill…

The bubble of excitement popped as quickly as it had formed. A story like that would call down the wrath of her supervisors like an axe to her neck. The lead was fascinating, vital, but worse than useless. A chalice full of delicious poison.

No doubt that was why Momiji had never bothered to tell anybody, despite it apparently being a regular occurrence. There was no way an accusation could survive the internecine politics of the higher-ups long enough to be acted upon.

Not to mention that most of her readership nowadays was outside Youkai Mountain, and wouldn’t give a fire rat’s ass about the corruption of some faceless tengu middle management who never left the compound.

As far as leads went, it was a dud. But it was still a lead, so she gave her hard-working wolf assistant a pat on the head as praise (and nearly got her fingers broken for the trouble).

Back in the present, she mulled the story over as she finished her bread. As always, Momiji was industrious; she had installed a tea kettle into Aya’s abode without permission, and was brewing cups of herbal tea. The blend was too mild for Aya’s tastes, but it apparently aided digestion, hangovers and all sorts of other maladies, and was the wolf’s chosen substitute for her beloved Eientei energy tonic. As predicted, the wolf brusquely slid a cup in front of her and demanded she drink it.

“Ayaya… Fine. At least you pick good leaves,” the crow said. It was only half a lie; she honestly didn’t know whether the leaves were good or not, but she knew from experience that most folks would hear a statement like that and end up giving a bit more information. It was just one of her interviewer’s bag of tricks.

For her effort, she got a terse reply. “So would you if your nose worked properly.”

Having delivered her withering response, the wolf took a deep breath and let the aroma wash over her. She was a slow drinker, Aya had noticed. Only the Hakurei Miko sipped her tea slower, and that was more of a desperate attempt to prolong her tea leaves than any true appreciation of the flavour. She got upset when Aya knocked her cup back in seconds, too. According to her, tea, like shogi, was to be savoured, not rushed.

It was an interesting little worldview. Not one Aya could afford to subscribe to herself, deadlines being what they were, but interesting. Momiji, it turned out, was an interesting person.

Aya wasn’t an idiot. For all the bluster and attitude Momiji gave her, her actions were surprisingly thoughtful. The bread, for instance. Bread was not a common sight on Youkai Mountain; most tengu would quite happily reach for a bowl of miso soup to start their morning instead. Momiji was probably no different.

Yet instead, she had brought Aya a breakfast that she could easily eat one-handed at her work desk without worrying about spilling it all over the manuscripts.

She’d cleaned up the office in a huff, but removing the clutter made working there feel a lot less of a chore.

She was bossy and sometimes violent with her orders regarding food and baths, but Aya couldn’t deny that she already felt more energetic after being forced to invest time in basic nutrition and relaxation.

She probably – no, absolutely – still hated Aya’s guts. But she set that aside in order to provide the working conditions necessary for success.

“What are you grinning about?” the wolf asked tersely.

“Just thinking about how cute you are.” Of course, she got an immediate growl as her response. “But alas, dear Momiji, work has to come before pleasure. I’m afraid I don’t have quite enough material for today’s paper, so I’m going to have to get a little creative.”

A dauntless grin settled on the crow’s face. Of course it did. One of the main things she’d learned as a tengu in tengu society – as a youkai in general, in fact – was that you smiled when something hurt. You did it because it messed with people, and it made them wonder what you were about to do next. You smiled because you were in the newspaper rat race, because tomorrow was going to be exactly the same as today and you had better get used to being tired and hurt. You didn’t flinch at the things that hurt you, and you didn’t complain at the things that really bothered you. Only oni and idiots flaunted their weaknesses.

That was what Aya told herself as she prepared, once again, to drag her newspaper’s name through the mud. To pervert the purpose of the Bunbunmaru that she had built with her own hands, and invested so much of her passion into.

“You can’t run that lead from last night?” Momiji sniffed, before shrugging. “Well, whatever. Just put in a shogi puzzle and be done with it.”

Aya blinked.

“A… what now?” she asked.

“Do your ears need cleaning? A shogi puzzle. Just draw out the board one move from victory, ask the reader to figure out the winning move, and print the solution in tomorrow’s paper.” Momiji’s eyes narrowed slightly. “They’re a staple in outside world newspapers, although unfortunately they use a much more simplified version of the game.”

“Where are you getting outside world newspapers from, Momiji?”

“I don’t. But I can read one over somebody’s shoulder from a distance of a thousand ri,” the wolf shrugged. “They usually have a whole page’s worth of word puzzles, shogi problems and trivia questions.”

Aya’s knuckles tightened around her pen.

She’d been led astray by outside world journalism before. But the little scraps she’d been able to find were nothing like what Momiji was describing. A whole page of puzzles and games… a whole page of things that didn’t have to be either news or lies, a way to stretch her material for the day without feeling guilty about it. It was a tempting prospect. Too tempting for her to dismiss out of hand.

“Tell me more about outside world newspapers. Do they have anything else like that?”

“I usually don’t bother to read past the shogi, but… I think they have a page for things like love fortunes and horoscopes, and sometimes one for relationship advice. Sometimes there’s a page to print out letters readers have sent to the newspaper, as well as various advertisements for outlandish outside world products.” The wolf spoke nonchalantly, but she’d already honed in on what Aya was looking for – as expected of her surprisingly earnest assistant.

“Ayaya… It sounds wonderful. But to be able to do all those things… Outside world journalists must be incredible.”

Momiji snorted. “They don’t do all those things. Haven’t you noticed? In outside world newspapers, there’s a different name under every article. That’s who wrote it. They’re all by different people who just try to sound the same. It’s called ‘correspondents’. The puzzles, the fortunes, and everything else are all done by different people too. If anything–”

She shook her head, and swallowed her next words. If anything, tengu journalists are more impressive for making a whole paper by themselves.

Aya said nothing for a full minute. A full, blessed minute.

“Momiji?” she said, at last.

The wolf’s tail fur bristled at Aya’s saccharine tone. “Yes?”

“I just wanted you to know that whoever signed your transfer is a complete idiot for letting me snatch you away. At this rate, I might actually have to keep you.”

A snarl formed in Momiji’s throat. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“I’m not. I wasn’t really expecting anything from you when you started working for me, but you’re already proving yourself to be an invaluable assistant. We may not get along, but I want to recognise your dedication.”

The words felt odd leaving Aya’s lips. Not a lie, exactly, but… not directed only at the person she was speaking to. Maybe they were words she’d wanted to hear for herself. Across the room, Momiji gave an exaggerated shrug.

“I’ve just been doing housework. And I only did that because I couldn’t stand the thought that I’ve been getting beaten by a harried, half-starved, hungover crow.”

That was what she said. But while Aya’s eyes weren’t quite as sharp as her junior’s, they were sharp enough to pick up the slow, stately wag that had taken hold of Momiji’s tail. That part of her was pretty cute too.

“Well, my dear Momiji, if you’re sick of housework, maybe you could whip me up a few of these shogi puzzles you were talking about? If we get a few ready in advance, then tomorrow we’ll have time to and pressure – I mean, ask a few acquaintances if they’ll help with this ‘correspondents’ business,” Aya said, laying out her plans. “I probably won’t ask them to help out permanently, but if I can just use that leeway to get back on track, I’ll have more time for good, honest journalism.”

“You can go back to peddling your usual rumours, you mean.” Momiji paused, her tail still swaying. “...I’ll make you a few shogi teasers, but I want time to go out hunting tonight.”

“Please do! Those skewers you made the other day were wonderful,” Aya laughed, and grinned tauntingly. “As expected from Momiji Inubashiri, the rumoured ‘snow-white death of pigs’”.

Momiji’s ears flattened. “Don’t call me by that stupid nickname. When boars make trouble on the mountain, I hunt them. And if you’ve got boar meat, then you might as well grill it. I don’t know why people gave me a nickname over that.”

“Ayaya... You say that, but youkai boar aren’t exactly small fry, you know? Most people who meet them never want to repeat the experience, never mind hunting them them down…”

“What else is there to do on patrol? I can’t play shogi when I’m on duty, and after living on the mountain so long the scenery doesn’t do much for me any more. Of course I’d try to amuse myself.”

“Picking a life or death fight just for entertainment… well, I suppose I can’t lecture you. Although, maybe if you cut down on the pork, you wouldn’t have to worry about all that puppy fat going to your hips?”

“Say that again, you flat-assed buzzard.”

“Ayaya. Is this sexual harassment in the workplace? I never thought I’d have to put my cute little assistant in the scandal sheets, but a journalist’s job is never done.”

Aya grinned as Momiji stormed across the office, her knuckles cracking. Was it smart to irritate her assistant while the deadline loomed? Probably not. But Aya, too, could not play shogi on duty, and the landscape of the mountain did nothing for her either. So she might as well amuse herself.

It was an ordinary day on Youkai Mountain. And as usual, a legendary battle was about to begin.

Chapter Text

“Medicines for saaaaaaaaaaaaale! Elixirs, tinctures and tonics! Powders, pills and poultices! All from the Eientei Clinic! Medicines for saaaaaaaaaale…”

A warm day in the height of summer. The sun beams down on a rabbit hiding her ears beneath a conical hat. In the Human Village, she is a familiar sight; her, and her backpack of woven bamboo filled with medicines, are welcome visitors in this place.

For a place known only as the Human Village, Reisen thinks, it is surprisingly metropolitan. Here and there, she spies familiar faces: youkai who, like her, hide their nature to roam the streets. The children eat shaved ice made by the fairies, and the adults drink beer served by a zashiki-warashi. Keine Kamishirasawa might watch over the village with stern eyes, but she cannot possibly keep all the youkai out; after all, the land of Gensokyo exists so that youkai may thrive.

For Reisen, seeing so many different types of youkai and people standing shoulder to shoulder is an entirely new experience. The Lunar Capital, the land of stillness, had nothing of the sort; nor, until recently, did Eientei, the stronghold of rabbits protected by a beguiling forest of bamboo.

She suspects that is why Eirin sends her here: to see the width and breadth of the land, and the people who live within it. The Lunar Capital and Eientei were gilded cages, but cages all the same; she is now free to roam, to explore, to see the vastness of a planet she now calls her own.

Well, she’d like to think so. In reality, her master is probably simply bored of making medicine for rabbits, and is looking to the outside for fresh subjects on which to test her art. She is not as capricious as the Princess or as battle hungry as the Phoenix, but Eirin Yagokoro is still an immortal.

Mokou herself is surprisingly pleasant whenever they meet in the village. Her obsession with Kaguya does not stretch to her subordinates; perhaps Mokou simply has no more space in her heart for additional grudges. She speaks roughly, but she will sometimes bob down beside Reisen to chat, or occasionally even offer a cigarette that she knows Reisen will refuse. When asked why she was being so agreeable, she had slowly closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sun.

“Well, we’re probably gonna know each other for a long, long time,” she’d said at last, with a tone that was half-weary and half-wry. “No harm in being friendly.”

There are other familiar faces around the village, many of which she met during the Imperishable Night incident. Marisa Kirisame, it goes without saying, is friendly, charming, and unfortunately given to helping herself to ‘free samples’ when Reisen’s guard is down. Reisen knows better than to chase her; any decent merchant has an allowance for theft built into their margins.

The Hakurei Miko is also a common sight. While saying that she’s pleased to see Reisen would be an overstatement – she has a wicked scowl reserved for any youkai she finds milling about the Human Village without her say-so, even if they’re no threat – she will occasionally try to sell off bundles of herbs she’s found growing on the grounds of the shrine. She’s surprisingly adept at picking them, and Eirin is usually happy to finance a purchase or two.

Alice Margatroid is a regular in the Human Village, and also a regular customer. She will often come to enquire about dream pills or any other curiosities the clinic might have developed, usually surrounded by a fleet of dolls, children and fairies, with whom she is surprisingly popular.

The same is true of Sakuya, whose feats of legerdemain go some way towards disguising her ditzy personality when she attends her mistress’s errands. Conversations with her have an odd stop-start rhythm, like different frames of a film reel stitched together, and Reisen can never quite get used to it.

But the one with whom Reisen has bonded the most closely with is, perhaps, Youmu Konpaku.

Many would question what, exactly, the Netherworld’s premier half-ghost gardener would be doing in the Human Village, and the overwhelming answer is grocery shopping. The mistress of Hakugyokuro has a ferocious appetite, and it falls to Youmu to keep their larder stocked. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say she spends more time on the grocery run than she does on gardening.

As a half-human she has no trouble being accepted in the village, and usually comes dressed in the rough-stitched clothes of a woodcutter with a heavy satchel on her back. More often than not she actually brings wood, although that has less to do with her aspirations of being a lumberjack and more to do with the Netherworld’s cherry trees needing an occasional trim.

In exchange for her wood (or the pelts of any unlucky animal she has tested her swordsmanship out on during the trip), she loads up on eggs, fresh veggies, and rice wine to use in her cooking. Then she begins the long trek back, sometimes discreetly using “200 Yojana in One Slash” to make the trip more bearable. The eggs generally do not survive; the half-ghost remains half-baked as always.

Sometimes – more often than not, nowadays – she will stop to chat if Reisen happens to be selling medicine in the village. Today is no exception.

“Here,” she says, flopping down on the bench next to Reisen. She hands over a plastic bottle that has drifted in from the outside world, filled with barley tea. It is cool and refreshing to the touch. “Fresh from my backpack.”

“Oh, thank you. I’m jealous of how convenient that is.”

Inside Youmu’s backpack is her ghost half. Not only does stowing it there keep it out of sight, but it also slightly chills all her groceries and keeps them fresh on the trip back. Reisen’s own backpack has been tampered with by Kaguya to keep the medicine inside from degrading, but sadly doesn’t keep her drinks cold like Youmu’s does.

An unkind observer would point out that this means the barley tea they’re drinking has technically been inside Youmu, but Reisen chooses not to worry about that. In Gensokyo, not thinking deeply is sometimes a vital life skill.

The bottle crackles pleasingly as they drain the tea between them, passing it back and forth. Reisen wipes the opening after each swig, and Youmu does not. She chooses not to think about that, either.

“How are the medicine sales?” Youmu asks, when they’re both refreshed.

“Not good, not bad. I think my master’s getting bored, so I’m hoping some people get sick soon. It’s no fun being her test subject. Even I get spooked by some of those needles.”

It’s an outrageous thing to say, but it melts easily into the gentle hubbub of the village. When Youmu shudders, it is not because of Reisen’s wry disregard for human health, but simply a sympathetic fear of booster shots.

“Maybe you ought to talk to that one spider youkai from the Underground? I’ve not met her myself, but supposedly she can cause illnesses on command.”

“Busting into the Underground to capture her would definitely cause a diplomatic incident, though.”

“I never said you should kidnap her!”

Reisen smiles softly. This is the way their conversations usually go. Youmu is a serious, straightforward soul without very much in the way of guile, and even Reisen – perhaps the sanest and most down-to-earth of Eientei’s residents – can’t resist teasing her a little. She wonders if this is how Tewi feels as she digs her pit traps…

“How is your sword training going, then?” she asks, changing the topic to spare the joke. “Have you figured out a new exercise?”

Youmu is not merely Hakugyokuro’s gardener and Yuyuko’s gofer; she is also, technically speaking, charged with instructing her mistress in the art of the blade. Why Yuyuko Saigyouji needs swordsmanship lessons is anyone’s guess; she seems quite able to kill people without a sword, thank you very much. Rumour has it that her ability is to tempt people to death, although that would be a rather lacklustre power for a youkai of her power level. It’d be harder to name a great youkai who couldn’t kill people with a snap of their fingers.

She is also, according to Youmu, something of a savant with a blade. Enough so that she easily and effortlessly outstrips Youmu’s ‘tuition’, forcing her to scrabble frantically for new ways of training and new things to teach. Part of Reisen thinks it’s all just a trick to drive Youmu’s growth, but she has nothing to base that particular conspiracy on.

Either way, it has set Youmu on an endless quest for true understanding of the sword – or, at least, enough of it to barely outstrip Yuyuko’s until their next training session.

“I have!” Youmu exclaims, proudly. “I’ve designed a drill that should keep Lady Yuyuko occupied for at least two weeks!”

“Oh?”

“The foundation of the exercise is… this!” With the air of a stage magician gleefully revealing the secret to their magic (or, to put it bluntly, an idiot), Youmu reaches into her backpack and brings forth… a tangerine. She then puts it gently on top of her head, balancing it carefully.

Reisen blinks. She waits. Time heals all wounds, and answers all questions. And she has many, many questions.

“The foundation of the technique is meditation. The first step is to assume to lotus position, and then, meditating deeply, prevent the tangerine from falling off your head,” Youmu babbles.

Reisen continues to blink. An awful habit, to be sure. She can’t help noticing that not only is this exercise extremely easy, but it doesn’t involve swords. At all.

“What’s the trick?” she says, when she thinks Youmu has accrued enough smugness to last her through the cold winter.

“The trick is that Lady Yuyuko could never just sit with a tangerine on her head and not try to eat it,” Youmu explains… albeit with a slightly pained expression. “When you’re facing a superior opponent, sometimes the best route is to let them defeat themselves.”

“And if she figures out the trick and does it?”

“Then we move onto stage two!” Youmu carries on hotly. “Using only your mind’s eye, defend the tangerine from an oncoming tangerine thief! It’ll train reaction time and the ability to sense malicious intent!”

“Hm,” Reisen hums. She’s spotted an obvious flaw in the plan: upon hitting stage two, Yuyuko can never lose. If she’s defending the tangerine, she’s in the role of a gluttonous ghost defending her meal. If she’s attacking the tangerine, she’s being driven forward with the promise of food. Either way, it will make her a truly unconquerable force.

But Youmu seems so proud of her plan that Reisen can’t bear to point any of that out. Instead, she’ll just offer her condolences next week, when the plan has inevitably fallen through. Perhaps she’ll allow herself a giggle about it when she gets back to Eientei. She can only dream.

Either way, she knows the troubles that come from having an overwhelming genius for a boss. That’s what binds Youmu and her together; they can sit down, swig barley tea, and complain a little about their jobs. That’s worth something, in a place like Gensokyo.

Alas, lazy days never last quite long enough, and before long Youmu stands. Unlike the Princess’s manipulation of eternity, her phantom cooling has its limits on how long it can keep groceries fresh. She is a girl with much to do and far to go, and her mistress will not wait forever. Reisen waves goodbye to her fondly, and already misses the taste of barley tea.

But the Human Village is a place of meetings and partings. They will see each other again on another day, just like this one, and they will complain and swap stories and let their stresses wash away for a little while. Reisen finds herself content with that. Before long her mind is drifting towards the village sweets shop, toward yokan and dango and daifuku; if she sells a few extra tonics today, she might have enough to get herself a treat. She stands up, adjusts her conical hat, and once more sets up a cry: ““Medicines for saaaaaaaaaaaaale...”

Another day, and a rare guest stalks the halls of Eientei.

Alice Margatroid, with her shawl and her long sleek boots and her procession of dolls that trail in her wake, has come to pick up her regular order. She’s a fine customer, and one of the few people in Gensokyo with Eirin’s favour; a doctor’s tonic and a witch’s brew are not quite the same thing, but there is enough overlap for lively conversation. Her puppetry has also won the eye of a certain bored, stay-at-home princess.

As a rule, Alice comes to Eientei for rarities, medicines too strange or experimental for Reisen to hawk in the village. Witches are creatures of information and experimentation; their strength is derived from knowledge, and their arts from practice. As a result, it’s surprisingly easy to pawn useless junk to them, provided that it’s novel. Alice no doubt considers herself a sensible and rational soul, above such simple tactics, and as such she falls for them routinely. It’s a bit of blind spot, and Reisen honestly finds it somewhat charming (although she worries about how much Tewi has started to influence her thought process).

In addition to the wide selection of experimental drugs, Alice often buys more conventional medicine. She buys it more often, Reisen thinks, than a solitary witch would really need, but far be it for a merchant to question their customer’s habits. Princess Kaguya, however, is not a merchant, and is fond of asking questions she thinks will irritate people. Needless to say, she wasted no time with Alice.

The puppeteer’s answer, delivered with a grimace: “There’s an obnoxious country mouse who’s set up shop in my back yard, and never takes care of her health. I suppose I have a soft spot for dumb animals, so I put a little medicine aside for her just in case.”

Alice, Reisen has decided, is full of charming points.

Of course, she’s hardly the only one to buy up medicine on behalf of a human friend – nor is she the only one who buys it specifically for Marisa, who has a trail of friends, enemies and admirers who are keen to watch her cause trouble for as many decades as they can. The Hakurei Miko has a small but terrifying army of youkai who would beat down the doors of Eientei if she were to ever fall ill, such is her importance to the power balance of Gensokyo. The maid of the Scarlet Mansion, the Maiden of Miare, the were-hakutaku teacher, the Suzunan book-seller, the Wind Priestess of Moriya… It seems all of them are being watched over by long-lived benefactors.

In short, the feeling is that the current crop of humans in Gensokyo is the most entertaining they’ve ever been, and the youkai community are keen to milk them for as long as they can get.

As Alice finalises her purchases with Eirin (a tonic that makes one five centimetres taller on the first waxing gibbous moon of the month, and a powder that makes one’s teeth itch in the presence of ferrous metals), she puts an elegant finger to her chin.

“Oh, I just remembered. I was given a message for you at the last banquet,” she says. “It seems the lady of Hakugyokuro is in need of medicine, and would like to discuss the details. Why a ghost would need medicine I’m not sure, but I imagine it’s quite a unique case.”

Reisen’s ears twitch as she grinds up herbs with a pestle and mortar. If it was so urgent, she thinks, Youmu might as well have told her at the village. But she supposes that the Hakurei Shrine’s banquets have a different atmosphere to them. They’ve become a place for youkai of different walks and territories to swap stories, trade information, and make requests of each other; in some respects, they’re the only formal forum in which to do so. Of course, Eientei rarely sends representatives of their own, so it seems they’ve drafted Alice as a messenger.

Eirin smiles softly. “A ghost asking for medicine? Hm. I do hope they’re not going to ask me to bring somebody back from the dead. It’s inelegant.”

“It’s much more efficient to keep them from dying in the first place, I suppose,” Alice replies gamely.

“Precisely. From a doctor’s point of view, it’s much better to innoculate the patient before they ever succumb to a condition, rather than scrambling to stabilise once the affliction has taken hold.”

It’s a faintly hair-raising discussion, but Reisen’s mind is already moving on to other things. Thinking logically, the Netherworld is full of phantoms, spirits, and ghosts; it is the land of the dead, a place where the doctors are too late and the arm of medicine has ceased to reach. The only resident of that place that she knows to be alive – who has a pulse to measure, a heartbeat to listen to, blood to flow and clot and spill – is Youmu Konpaku, who is only half a ghost.

Youmu Konpaku does not buy Reisen’s medicine in the village, and nor does her mistress. There are no other servants or members of their house, and no great youkai to act as guarantor for her health or set aside medicine for her.

The rabbits hand’s pause in her work. Her brow furrows. She bites her lip.

“Master–”

“Yes, yes.” The corners of Eirin’s eyes wrinkle as she smiles, before turning back to Alice. “As you see, my assistant is a compassionate girl. And it promises to be an interesting case, anyway. Of course we’ll accept. I’ll send an envoy to the Netherworld to get the details.”

“Oh, she’s your assistant in medicine, as well?” Alice asks, raising an eyebrow. “I often see her selling it at the Human Village, but I didn’t know she helped prepare it.”

“Udonge has many talents. She does a little bit of everything. While I only entrust her with basic prep work, she’s a great help,” Eirin says indulgently. Reisen fights the urge to squirm under the compliments.

“I see. Well, she’s very conscientious. I often see her bandaging the little scrapes and bruises the village children pick up, and teaching them how to wash their wounds properly. Quite admirable.”

“That much is just common sense, right?” Reisen butts in. Even as she does, she realises that she’s just falling back into old patterns. Her training on the moon was harsh. Excellence was the expectation, and mediocrity was remedied with punishment. Now, in her later life, accepting praise has become… difficult. Her master treats it as an amusing foible from an otherwise dedicated apprentice; Kaguya and Tewi see it as a weakness to be pushed and prodded for entertainment.

“Yes, well. ‘Common sense’ is hardly applicable in Gensokyo,” Alice responds primly. She seems pleased with the reaction, though she’d never say it outright. “Thank you anyway for your work. My business here is over, so perhaps I’ll see you next in the village.”

“Ah, I’m afraid she’ll likely be busy for a while,” Eirin responds, with a warm smile. “As our reliable travelling merchant, she’s by far the most suited for a trip to Hakugyokuro. Especially since she’s so interested in the case.”

Eirin’s smile is angelic and motherly as she heaps work upon her subordinate’s plate. The moon’s greatest genius is gentler than the Watatsuki Sisters… but not by much.

“Phew… I actually made it…”

Reisen wipes her brow, and sets down her pack in the gateway to Hakugyokuro while she catches her breath. Unlike when she goes to the village, she has done away with her merchant garb and conical hat. She is now representing the Eientei Clinic in youkai society, and wears the iconic blazer jacket that symbolises business in the outside world.

Getting to Hakugyokuro meant passing through the Netherworld, demesne of spirits. The impurity collected here would shock an ordinary moon rabbit. But Reisen is now an inaba of the Earth, in word and in deed, and she cannot allow herself to be turned away by a little impurity.

Ghosts, on the other hand, are a different matter. She has quickly discovered that they’re something of a weakness for her. Her unique talent – the ability to control waves – has a wide variety of applications, affecting light, sound, and even the ocean… if Gensokyo had an ocean. By far her favourite trick is manipulating brainwaves, which she often uses to quietly lower the aggression from some of the youkai she meets in her travels, avoiding pointless fights.

The thing about ghosts is that they live in a post-brain economy, so tinkering with their brainwaves is out of the question. Most of them are beyond the need for eyes or ears as well, which makes manipulating light or sound worthless too. Needless to say, even the usual standby of blowing their head off doesn’t make the situation better.

In short, it’s danmaku or nothing when it comes to ghosts. And it’s difficult to always be in the mood for danmaku, if she’s honest. There’s always a theatrical element, a focus on beauty, that contrasts with the spartan efficiency the Moon Rabbit Corps bred into her. She likes that, but she likes it a lot less the fifth time in a day than she did the first. Ghosts tend to form attachments, too. They get stuck and obsessed over you until you beat them down.

She wonders if telling a ghost to ‘get a life’ counts as a slur. She’ll supposes she’ll figure it out when she passes over herself.

Either way, she’s here now, and the domain of Yuyuko Saigyouji is somewhere even ghosts hesitate to trespass without good reason. Reisen doubts she’ll be bothered too much by nameless spirits within these walls.

Her impression of Hakugyokuro is that it is a lonely place. There are few visitors to the zen gardens, which sit with their sands undisturbed; the cherry trees keep their counsel to themselves. Compared to Eientei, where the inaba of the earth roam free and cause mischief, or even the Human Village, where merchants call out in strident voices and youkai rub shoulders with humans on the street, it truly seems desolate.

Of course, Reisen knows full well that the amount of people can make little difference to how lonely a place feels. The Lunar Capital was also a lonely place, despite how many lived there. It was simply a different kind of loneliness, the feeling of being surrounded by other people who had their own worries, their own lives, and who could reach out and connect with you at any time but who always, always, always chose not to, again and again and day after day. It was a sheet iron wall of indifference, a knowledge that so many people had decided that associating with you would be a net negative to their life, or, at the very least, not enough of a net positive to be worth the effort. Supposedly the Outside World is like that, too. She shudders to think.

But in Hakugyokuro, there weren’t even people to ignore you. Just a mistress and her gardener, all alone in the realm of spirits. Without realising it, Reisen quickens her stride towards the entrance hall.

There, at last, she sees a familiar face: A girl with platinum white hair, a green dress, and a tangerine balanced precariously on her head. She is sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, with her palms on her knees and her ghost half wafting languidly beside her, and she is definitely snoring. Youmu Konpaku, in all her natural majesty. Reisen sighs.

Having found her patient, she decides that she might as well go about the trappings of being a doctor. In her pack there is a selection of remedies for common illnesses, although she has a feeling that anything which can affect a half-ghost will be anything but simple to treat.

The first step is diagnosis. Assess the symptoms, without tunnel-visioning on a cause. A quick glance reveals little of anything; Youmu’s hair is glossy, her complexion hale, and there are no obvious rashes or blemishes on the skin that Reisen can see. Sadly, there’s only so much she can glean from a patient who is asleep and, well, clothed.

There’s nothing particularly awry with Youmu’s brainwaves, either. A fairly typical pattern for a sleeping human. A little closer observation tells her that Youmu has been napping for roughly two hours, although that doesn’t really help them in any way.

Reisen hums in dissatisfaction. If Eirin were here, her next move would probably be to lift the eyelids and check the condition of the pupils, but she’s not quite confident enough to do that herself. Maybe a temperature check, then? She can accomplish that just by brushing a hand against the ghost-girl’s forehead. It won’t be accurate by any means, but at least it won’t be intrusive.

Besides, she actually has an advantage here. An ordinary doctor might be dismayed at the fact that Youmu generally runs a little colder than a normal human, but Reisen is familiar enough with the patient to figure that information in. She nods, satisfied that her unique talents are being put to good use, and reaches a hand towards Youmu’s head.

With the speed of a striking snake, the gardener’s darts out to grab her wrist.

“Hah! Even if I’m resting my normal eyes, my mind’s eye never closes! You’ll have to do better than that, Lady Yuyu–”

Youmu breaks off her triumphant declaration to yawn, loudly and gracelessly, right in Reisen’s face. Yawning, of course, is a well-known symbol of gravitas, especially in the middle of a sentence. As little as it does for her dignity, it does at least give her a chance to actually look at who she’s talking to.

“You’re not Lady Yuyuko,” she says, like a child.

“I’m not Lady Yuyuko,” Reisen confirms. “You can let go of my hand now.”

She attempts to shake Youmu’s hand from her wrist, but the grip of a swordswoman shouldn’t be taken lightly. Youmu’s arm flops limply back and forwards as she shakes it around. At some point the tangerine falls off the gardener’s head, which seems to break her stupor.

“Reisen, what are you doing here? Wait, before that, do you want tea? Wait, no, it doesn’t matter. I’m meant to serve tea to guests, whether they want it or not. So what are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I’m here for you, obviously. As a representative of Eientei Clinic–” – she allows herself to puff her chest out for just a moment – “–I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with you so that my master can make a cure. Now, tell me everything. Have you been experiencing any sense of lethargy? Or fluctuations in temperature, or strange rashes? Any irregularities in your bowel movements or your monthly timings?”

Youmu’s eyes widen. “Um?!”

Reisen tuts, wagging her finger. “I know it’s uncomfortable to talk about these things, but sometimes medicine is uncomfortable. Nobody likes taking their shots or being issued suppositories, but sometimes we have to go through a little bit of discomfort to get better. Even the village kids know that.”

“I’m not sick, though?!”

“Oh? Youmu, we have a visitor? Or… did you go out hunting for some lunch?”

Every goosebump on Reisen’s skin stands to sudden attention.

She knows that voice. That cadence. A slow, leisurely style of speaking, almost airheaded and careless. Almost. Underneath it, barely disguised, something frightening lurks. Something slumbers beneath that sleepy exterior, buried deep beneath the lackadaisical facade. Reisen has met her often enough to know it, or suspect it. A rabbit knows a predator when she sees one.

Yuyuko Saigouyji, mistress of the Netherworld, raises a hand to her cheek and tilts her head winsomely.

“Lady Yuyuko. She says she’s here on business from the Eientei Clinic, but… She seems to think I’m sick?” The gardener crosses her arms in thought, before adding: “And I don’t think we should eat her, Lady Yuyuko. I couldn’t fit her in the oven.”

“Well, that’s why you just cut her up and cook her a little bit at a time.”

What follows is five solid minutes – and Reisen knows, because she counts every single horrifying second while quietly inching closer to the door in case she needs to make an expeditious retreat – of Youmu trying to convince Yuyuko that chopping up guests to their estate was Bad Manners and would introduce unnecessary wear and tear on the knives, which were been passed down from her grandfather, and that, no, rabbit sushi is not a thing and had never been a thing and she is not personally going to be the bold culinary explorer who makes it a thing. The impression Reisen gets is that Yuyuko is having rather a lot of fun; the similarities between her and Princess Kaguya are striking.

Eventually, Yuyuko calls the farce to an end with a click of her fan. “Well, if we can’t cook guests, we can’t cook guests. But I can’t say I’m aware of my little Youmu being sick. What kind of illness do you think she has?” Yuyuko asks, looking at Reisen with big, wide eyes. Eyes that are already crinkling at the corners with amusement. “Is she homesick, perhaps? Or… maybe lovesick?”

“I keep telling you, I’m not sick at all!”

“We got a message saying that you had asked for Eientei’s medical expertise at a recent banquet,” Reisen clarifies, summarily ignoring the squawking samurai. “This is the Netherworld. Youmu is the only one who could be sick, since she’s the only thing here that’s alive. Am I wrong?”

Yuyuko and Youmu both blink. Both of them look at her with gentle pity, and for this one moment, it is clear that Youmu apparently does take after her mistress.

“My, my. There are plenty of living things in this realm. Surely you must have seen some of them on your way to the house,” Yuyuko says with a furrowed brow.

“I don’t think I did.”

“Reisen,” Youmu hisses, like a schoolchild trying to pass her friend an answer. “I’m a gardener. Do you know what a gardener does?”

The rabbit looks back at her as if she’s been slapped. “I’m not an idiot. They raise plants.”

“Right. Plants. Those things that grow up from the ground and get bigger? And die off if they don’t get enough water or sunlight?” Youmu carries on earnestly.

After a second of reflection, Reisen’s face pales, and the kinks in her long ears seem to wilt just a little.

“You’re saying your plants are sick? Not you?” she asks at last.

“That’s right!” Yuyuko nods, smiling gently. “Our cherry trees in particular have been breaking out with spots on their bark, and dear Youmu has been quite concerned about it. It does spoil our cherry blossom viewings a little, after all. I was chatting to a close friend about it over some drinks, and it seems she passed it on at the latest banquet.”

Reisen sighs. It feels almost like she’s just fallen prey to one of Tewi’s pranks. Or… no, it’s worse, because at least Tewi is malicious enough to dig the hole and disguise it first. She can’t really even say Youmu and Yuyuko did that; she just blundered into things and made an idiot out of herself all of her own accord.

The mistress of Hakugyokuro, disregarded all propriety, wafts over to pat her on the back. “There, there. I think it’s quite charming that you rushed over to play doctor with Youmu. We’ve all been that age. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

The grinding of Reisen’s teeth is more than audible. It would probably be a bad idea to assault a potential client, especially one who can just kill you and that’s her thing, that’s The Thing That She Does, but her rescue comes in the form of Youmu puffing out her meagre chest and standing in front of her like a half-human shield.

“L-Lady Yuyuko, please don’t tease Miss Reisen! Not only is she a guest, but she came all this way to help us out!” Youmu says, and then, as if buoyed by the momentum of standing up to her mistress: “And! And, you need to focus more on your training! Ever since we introduced our new exercise, you haven’t managed to steal the tangerine from my head even once!”

Yuyuko giggles, superlatively amused. There is probably no one in Gensokyo who finds Youmu’s growth – her fleeting moments of independence, her boldness, the rare and fragile bonds she has begun to nurture with the world outside Hakugyokuro’s peaceful gardens – quite as charming as she does.

“My, my. I suppose I’ll just let you girls get on with things, then. Miss Medicine Seller, please feel free to give Youmu a thorough checkup before you go, if you like.” She giggles again, infuriatingly, before her eyes glint slyly. “As for the training… Well, I must admit that I haven’t really tried. You see, Youmu, when you sit in the entrance hall with a tangerine on your head, it means there’s nobody to keep me from raiding the pantry. Why worry about one tangerine when I can just help myself to as many as I like?”

With that parting blow to her gardener’s ego, Yuyuko wafts away through the halls, blithely humming a tune. As always, it’s impossible to know if she’s an airhead or a cunning strategist. The only thing Reisen truly knows for sure is –

“Your master’s a real handful,” she murmurs.

“Tell me about it.”

Not for the first time, Reisen and Youmu commiserate about how unreasonable the great youkai around them are. It seems that, whether at Hakugyokuro or the Human Village, some things remain constant.

Momentum is a fine thing. To start is difficult; to continue is effortless. Once she’s actually managed to identify the correct patient, the rest of Reisen’s job is as easy as can be. Given that none of the miscellaneous remedies she brought with her are suitable for arboreal consumption, her only recourse is to chip off a section of the afflicted bark, take a record of the flesh underneath with a camera ‘borrowed’ from an unfortunate tengu reporter, and bring them both back to her master.

Trees, she finds, are agreeable patients. They make no criticisms of her bedside manner, and they don’t scream and bleed everywhere when you cut bits of them off for future use. Well, most of them don’t scream. Ninety percent of them, probably. As for the remaining ten percent, Gensokyo is a strange place with strange trees, and that’s okay.

Before she leaves, she is aggressively bullied into drinking three cups of tea by Youmu, because she is a Guest and Guests are obliged to drink tea and Hosts are obliged to make it for them. Yuyuko makes no further appearances, having raided the pantry to her satisfaction and gone back to sleep. The world is full of small mercies.

Less merciful are Tewi and Princess Kaguya, who drag the story of the whole adventure out of her as soon as she returns to Eientei. Reisen not knowing what a plant was is the funniest joke they’ve heard all week, and they’ll probably be repeating it for a lot longer than that. At least one of Tewi’s underling rabbits gives her a comforting pat on the back.

Reisen is surprisingly popular among Earth rabbits not named Tewi, since she’s not only a comrade but Eirin’s disciple, and doctors are held in high esteem by the Inaba of the Earth. Supposedly, humans in the outside world engineered a great plague that scoured the population of wild rabbits, and rabbit youkai rarely showed themselves in front of humans as a response. Having the Moon’s finest pharmacist in their corner was a great comfort to them, and Tewi’s association with Eirin was one of the reasons they continue to accept her as a leader despite her troublesome personality.

The other reason, incidentally, is that Tewi’s ability to grant luck seems only to affect herself, and the easiest way to exploit it is to put her in a position where what benefits her benefits the rest of the group. The Inaba of the Earth are not powerful by nature, and most of them have grown surprisingly wily as a result.

As for Eirin herself, the fact that she’s being asked to make tonics for topiary seems not to faze her at all. She merely accepts her samples with a smile.

“It seems you had fun, Udonge,” she says, having apparently heard an entirely different story to the one that Reisen told her. “Medicine for trees… It seems like a novel enough way to spend an afternoon.”

Perhaps for any other doctor, this would be the height of arrogance. The heavens would open, and lighting would strike them down on the spot as punishment for their hubris. But the Brain of the Moon got her title for a reason, and settles down in her study to flex her knowledge.

The medicine takes a mere half a day to formulate, and a little longer to manufacture. Reisen is warned very specifically not to eat it, because while it isn’t necessarily toxic, it will glue her to the lavatory and make her regret being born. She wonders if people really see her as the type who would down random medicines on a whim, but doesn’t ask for fear of what the answer might be.

When the time comes to deliver the medicine, Reisen and Youmu agree to meet at the Human Village rather than Hakugyokuro. To be frank, it’s more about avoiding Yuyuko than the actual logistics; describing that woman as a handful would be an exercise in understatement. Yuyuko is more than a handful. She is an armful. A barrowfull. A boatload.

“Well, that’s my mistress,” Youmu says a little sheepishly as she takes the medicine. It’s bashful, but it’s not an apology; Yuyuko is not wrong to be who she is, in Youmu’s view. It’s just that she sometimes wishes she could be somebody else for half an hour. “You’re sure this will work?”

“All medicine depends on the patient’s will to live, so I guess it’s not foolproof,” Reisen admits. “But it’s the best medicine there is, and trees don’t do anything but stay alive, so I think the odds are pretty good.”

“Understood.”

Youmu pockets the bottle, and hefts her pack. She’s loaded up heavy again today. After Yuyuko started using Youmu’s tangerine-based training methods as an opportunity to raid the larder, it seems they’ve gone through most of their stockpile. The gardener’s current task is to rebuild it. There are, Reisen notes, absolutely no tangerines in Youmu’s many bags, and she very much doubts there will be going forward.

“Um, Reisen? Mistress Yuyuko actually gave me a message for you,” the ghost girl admits, staring at her shoes. “She says… she says thank you for helping us out, and that you’re welcome to come over any time. She also says you’re invited to our next cherry blossom viewing, provided the trees make a good recovery.”

Reisen wrinkles her nose a little. “A flower viewing? With her?”

“Oh, she’ll probably be doing a flower viewing with her other friends instead. It’ll just be me, I think.”

“She has other friends?”

“She does,” Youmu confirms, grimacing. “The spooky kind.”

Reisen grimaces in sympathy. “You could always come over to our place, you know. You’ve been to Eientei before, right? So you know the way just fine. Oh, but Mistress Eirin might take the chance to get you updated on all your booster shots.”

Youmu shivers – a dramatic, all-over body shiver that crawls from head to toe. “That’s why I don’t come over to your place. Even the village kids say that if you go to Eientei, the doctor there will jab a huge needle in your butt.”

“Yeah, but it makes you live longer, And we don’t put in in your butt. There’s better places to stick needles, usually,” Reisen shrugs. She’s probably taken more injections than the rest of Gensokyo put together, so she can’t find it in herself to be scared of needles. Except the really big ones. “Just think it over, okay?”

Youmu gives her an expression that suggests that, if anybody were to advance on her with a needle, she would think with her legs rather than her brain. Reisen sighs; spreading the gospel of good medical practice is tough in Gensokyo.

“Well, if you’re not going to take your shots, at least take some medicine with you in case of emergency,” she says, pressing a few assorted tonics into Youmu’s hands. “Make sure you read the instructions. And don’t drink too much of this one. I know it smells sweet and yummy, but I guarantee you’ll regret it.”

“Do you have anything for back pain?” Youmu asks, rolling an aching shoulder.

“Not without a full examination,” Reisen warns, eyeing Youmu’s pack. “It’s better to address the root cause than relying on painkillers, anyway. Have you considered a massage?”

“Do you give massages?” Youmu asks hopefully. “I always feel sore after training.”

“N… Not personally, no.”

“Oh. That’s a shame. I don’t really know anybody else I’d be comfortable asking for one,” Youmu sighs. “Well… I should probably get going. I’ll see you next time.”

They say their goodbyes, and Reisen watches her lope out of the village with oddly mixed emotions. For a girl who can deflect oncoming attacks in her sleep, Youmu is unguarded in the strangest ways. Even though she seems good at housework and chores, Reisen gets the feeling she needs a little taking care of.

And, in a sense, she is being taken care of, isn’t she? Just like all the other interesting humans of Gensokyo, she has a friendly youkai watching over her shoulder, worrying after her health and giving her bottles of medicine. Reisen just never expected that youkai would be her.

Perhaps in three or six months, she will once again find herself on the veranda at Hakugyokuro. She will watch as a petal from the cherry trees slowly floats down and lands on the surface of a cup of sake, and she will probably get more drunk than she intends to be. Perhaps she’ll talk to Eirin about branching into physical therapy, and learn to give massages properly herself.

There are a lot of perhapses in Gensokyo. A lot of possibilities. It is a land of unmatched potential, a wide and yet small world with countless familiar faces. She is no longer in the Lunar Capital. The iron wall of indifference does not exist in this place, where every person is vivid and unique. Here she can hate, love, quarrel and play favourites, and others will do the same to her.

Well, those are grand thoughts to be having on a sunny afternoon. But the here and now will not wait patiently while perhapses manifest themselves. She is still her master’s pet, and she still has medicine unsold. She stands up, swigs the last of the barley tea her friend left her, adjusts her conical hat, and sets up the cry:

““Medicines for saaaaaaaaaaaaale! Elixirs, tinctures and tonics! Powders, pills and poultices! All from the Eientei Clinic! Medicines for saaaaaaaaaale…”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Momiji. What’s your ambition in life?”

Momiji’s ear flicked as if she’d heard a particularly annoying insect buzzing around her. But for once, she was feeling relatively relaxed. Good food, good drink and good music had soothed her enough that she didn’t react to Aya’s question by spitting in her face – although she might have briefly considered it.

For the past week, the Bunbunmaru newspaper had been experiencing a surge in popularity as a result of the correspondent scheme Momiji had engineered. The shogi puzzles she’d made had played well to the tastes of the mountain tengu, and the bored patrol tengu in particular. Aya, meanwhile, had suckered – ahem, persuaded – none other than Reimu Hakurei herself into half-assing some love fortunes in return for some grocery money, which seemed to have piqued the interest of folks outside Youkai Mountain. They’d even gotten a response to Aya’s newly instituted ‘Lonely Hearts of Gensokyo’ column, which Momiji found frankly baffling; if she were lonely and looking for love, Aya Shameimaru would be the last person she’d make privy to that information.

For Aya, the sudden boom of popularity was bittersweet. On one hand, she finally had time to focus on the aspects of her paper that she cared about. On the other, it really felt like people were enjoying all the bits of the paper that had nothing to do with her own authorship. She had told Momiji this with a wry smile on her face, and Momiji had obliging laughed at her for it.

But those reservations aside, the crow tengu was over the moon at how the last week or so had gone. So over the moon that she had invited, or almost demanded, that Momiji come drinking with her to celebrate. Unfortunately, it was difficult to turn down your superior’s offer for a drinking party, especially if they were paying for it on their own dime, so Momiji found herself dragged along for the outing.

Aya’s chosen venue was surprisingly not Geidontei, the rumoured youkai pub of the Human Village. Geidontei, she claimed, was too rich in stories and gossip, too well-frequented by the colourful personalities of Gensokyo. For a reporter like Aya, going there would turn into work and rumour-collecting, even if she walked in with the intention to drink.

Instead, they had come to a little dirt trail not too far away from the Hakurei Shrine, where Mystia Lorelei ran her grilled lamprey stand. Aya had a soft spot for the night sparrow, perhaps because they were both birds and business owners. The beer was cheap, the food was good, and the dulcet tones of the owner’s singing drifted over the patrons as she cooked their orders; as far as Bunbunmaru’s chief reporter was concerned, you could ask for nothing more.

If there was one thing Momiji would have changed, it was the fact that Aya insisted on sitting next to her and not some place else, like the molten interior of the sun. But if there was anything else, it was the choice of food. The grilled lamprey was good. In fact, it was very good. But she wanted to see what the owner would do with a hank of boar meat. Mystia Lorelai was a fellow disciple of the grill, and Momiji wanted to properly compare their strength.

“Ayaya… Don’t ignore your boss. Is that what passes for professionalism for a white wolf tengu?” Aya groused, snatching a skewer from Momiji’s plate.

“My ambitions, hm? Eat. Hunt. Play shogi.” She considered adding ‘put your head on a spike’ to the list, but felt like picking too many fights would spoil the mellow atmosphere Mystia had created. She had enough respect for the establishment to pick her battles. “Nothing else interests me that much.”

To her surprise, Aya’s brow furrowed as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. It was a perfectly normal, reasonable response. A mostly truthful one, too. Certainly no reason for the crow tengu to make a face like she had a fishbone stuck in her throat. (Maybe she did. They were eating lamprey. Did lamprey have bones? It was a question Momiji had never asked herself before, but she suspected the answer was no.)

“Momiji,” Aya asked at last, her tone deliberately light. “Are you an idiot or something?”

Momiji’s first instinct was to swing. Her second instinct was to break her bottle of beer on the table and stab Aya with it. Her third instinct, which unfortunately was the one she had to settle for, was to growl menacingly as opposed to attempting murder in public.

“Ayaya. Stop with the dog noises for a second and listen,” Aya snapped. “You do realise what this is, right? When I take you out, I buy you food and booze, and I ask, hey, what are your ambitions, what do you want out of life, that kind of thing?” She paused for an angry swig of her beer. “It’s called fishing, you idiot.”

Mystia’s song trailed to a close, and a worried silence overtook the other patrons. Aya, while not the scariest youkai in the land, was strong enough that none of the small fry who patronised Mystia’s stand wanted to be in the blast zone if she got angrier than she already was.

But the fact that she was angry in the first place was what surprised Momiji the most. This was the same stupid idiot bird who just grinned at her every time she tried to hit her with a haymaker. Not once in their whole, long feud had she felt like she’d gotten a proper rise out of Aya, and now she was losing her temper out of nowhere?

“Are you drunk?” Momiji asked incredulously, although even she, a light drinker by tengu standards, would have had trouble getting wasted on the draft beer Mystia was serving.

Aya drummed her fingers on the table, getting more and more agitated. “No, Momiji. I’m trying to figure out what it is you want. Because you know what? You’ve been a great assistant. Amazing, even. A little more than a week ago, I was exhausted, up to my ears in deadlines and compromising on everything. Now I’m working on the stuff I care about, and I actually have the energy to do it. I even have enough time to take a night off! I left my camera at home! I never do that!”

Momiji’s ears flattened. Being complemented by Aya, and apparently genuinely at that, was a new and discomforting feeling. “So? I was just discharging my duties. I did the job that was expected of me. It’s the baseline. It’s not worth praising, or trying to give me some extra reward.”

“Yes. It. Is!” Aya retorted hotly, slapping her fist into her palm with every word. “That’s the problem, Momiji. You’re used to thinking like that. Your superiors don’t appreciate you, just like my superiors don’t appreciate me. And in another couple days, you’ll be right back in the patrol corps, serving under the same idiot who let me snatch you out of his hands because it was too annoying to keep you. Doesn’t that irritate you? It irritates me!”

“I was trying not to think about that.” The white wolf was unable to keep the grimace from her face.

“I have been thinking about it.” Aya’s eyes glinted. “If you’re just going to go back and work for a boss that sucks, you might as well keep working for me instead. I know we don’t get along, but at least I appreciate your work ethic. That’s what this is, Momiji. That’s what we’re doing. You’re being headhunted. I’m asking you what you want so I can give it to you in return for staying as my assistant. And I’m spending my first night off in who knows how long to do it, because I think you’re important enough for that. C’mon. Drink your beer, eat your food, and give me something to work with here.”

Momiji kept her jaw clenched, mostly to prevent it from falling open in shock. True, she’d done a good job. She knew that. But she’d only done it to satisfy her own pride. Was it really worth Aya pitching a fit over it and trying to actually, properly recruit her? She took a long draught of beer, mostly as an excuse not to speak before she’d sorted out her thoughts.

“...You say that, but it’s not like I really want anything,” she said at last.

“Bullshit. You’re a tengu, not a Buddhist monk. There has to be something.”

“I’m being serious,” she protested. “I just… eat, work, and sleep. What else is there?”

Aya’s expression changed. During her rant, she’d been… not angry, necessarily. Well, maybe a little angry, but passionate was a better word. Spirited. She’d been talking about things she genuinely cared about, like her paper and… well, apparently, Momiji, although it felt ludicrous to think about it that way.

But now, she was just disappointed.

“You’re really going to say that? You’re really going to pretend that, nope, there’s nothing I want, there’s nothing you can do, right after I said all that? Ayayaya… I know you don’t like me, but isn’t that a bit much?” the crow asked. And then, more bitterly: “I don’t even know what your problem was with me in the first place.”

She stood up, shaking her head. A few youkai were obviously staring at her, but a few sharp glances had them hurriedly returning to their meals.

“Proprietress, can I get the bill?” she called. “Rather than wasting time here, I should be stocking up on material for next week.”

She paid and left, leaving Momiji alone with a platter of grilled lamprey and her own thoughts.

“Um, here. Mysty says it’s on the house.”

Half an hour later, Momiji was still trying to work out exactly what had just happened to her when somebody slid a fresh bottle of beer onto her table.

The culprit was one Kyouko Kasodani, who had been scuttling back and forth helping Mystia to bus the tables and dole out the grub. While she wasn’t really familiar with the girl, Momiji had seen her name and photograph in some newspaper or another; every youkai of even minor note had found their way onto the front page of at least one of the tengu newspaper at some point.

“Thanks,” she replied, her voice somehow a little heavier than she was expecting it to be.

For a moment, the yamabiko paused, her eyes darting left and right as if trying to pick a direction. Then, she nodded to herself, clenching her fists as she did. “Um, do you mind if I sit?”

Momiji thought about it.

On one hand… well, she was in a surprisingly bad mood, considering she’d managed to rid herself of a bothersome crow. Or had the crow rid herself of her? It was tough to say. But having been blown up on in public had not done anything for Momiji’s temper, and she felt like she’d make poor company right now.

But Kyouko had brought her a beer. And she liked the girl’s spirit. She was exactly the kind of youkai Momiji would exchange friendly words with on her daily patrol route, or maybe trade some of her hunting spoils with. The was a clear, warm quality to her voice that made her hard to say no to.

In the end, it was the slowly wagging tail and the dog ears on her head that sealed the deal. A yamabiko wasn’t exactly a white wolf, but Momiji had found herself missing the company of the patrol corps, and a beast youkai was probably as close as she was going to get.

“Go ahead,” she said at last, and cracked open the beer. She poured half into Aya’s abandoned glass, and pushed it toward her. “Sorry about the commotion.”

“Oh, it’s fine. You ought to see some of the other youkai that drink here!” the yamabiko replied brightly. “So, you work for Aya’s newspaper?”

“Kind of. Not for much longer, anyway.” She took a thoughtful sip of her beer. “I made the shogi puzzles we’ve been running.”
“Oh! I saw those! I don’t play it myself, but Lady Nazin does. I really like the love fortunes, though! Me and Mysty have been having a bunch of fun comparing our results.”

“That so?” The white wolf suppressed a wry smile as she thought of just how little effort Reimu had put into them. She’d probably farmed half of them out to Marisa. Presumably, those were the accurate ones. “Good to hear.”

“Um… Miss Momiji?” the yamabiko asked, dropping her voice. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“If you want. I’m not a newspaper tengu, so I can keep my mouth shut. Unlike some.”

Kyouko took a shifty look around – mostly at the bar. Then she took a deep breath, and spoke. “I’m… actually kind of jealous of how you and Aya get along.”

Momiji threw her a sharp look. “We don’t. Before this job, we fought every time we met. Everybody on the mountain knows we hate each other. She was even just yelling about how we don’t get along.”

“But she was also yelling about how she thought you were important, and how she wanted you to talk to her.”

“I don’t know where she got that from,” Momiji said, looking into the middle distance. For her, the middle distance was very far away. “I’m not important. I’m just a rank and file patrol tengu. All I did was make suggestions and clean her pigsty of a house. She doesn’t need me. She just needs a maid.”

“Aha… ha… well… I don’t really know about any of that...” the yamabiko laughed awkwardly. “But you can at least yell at each other properly. That’s what I’m really jealous of.”

How did you yell at someone ‘properly’, Momiji wondered? Well, she knew better than to ask that question of a yamabiko. They might actually give you an answer, and if you were unlucky, a demonstration.

“See, me and Mysty…” Kyouko continued, hesitating for a moment. “We’re kind of fighting. I think? I’m not sure. We’re not really fighting and nothing’s happened, but she’s mad at me. Or sad about me? It’s too complicated. But every time I ask if something’s wrong, she just says there isn’t and that there’s nothing I can do about it. But how can I know that if she won’t say what the problem is?”

Momiji could hear the frustration mounting in the yamabiko’s voice, and wordlessly poured a little more beer into her glass.

“It feels like our relationship is… I don’t know. Sick. Like it’s wasting away or something. But because we’re friends and nothing’s happened, we can’t really argue about it properly.” The yamabiko bit her lip. “That’s why… I kind of envy you, because you can yell at each other and clear things up.”
Momiji shook her head, and replied gruffly. “That so? Well, it’s not clear to me.”

But… wasn’t that a lie?

She wasn’t an idiot. Aya had been speaking angrily, but clearly. She wanted Momiji to stay as her assistant. Fine. Understandable. The idiot crow only really cared about her paper, but Momiji had helped her paper when nobody else would. She’d touched on something close to Aya’s heart, and that was why Aya was getting emotional about it. A maid could have done what Momiji had done, but they hadn’t and Momiji had. It was no longer about how amazing her clairvoyance might be at gathering news, and more about who she was and what she’d done.

Aya was frustrated by the fact that Momiji hadn’t said what she wanted. To her, it probably felt like a flat refusal to even consider the idea of working on the paper with her further, even after she spelled out what she was doing and made her arguments.

And she felt wronged, because she had no idea why Momiji had picked a bone with her in the first place. She just had one day, and they’d been feuding since without any real rhyme or reason, each quarrel leading into the rest. It probably felt bad to reach out to somebody, to say you valued them and you were prepare to sacrifice your time and energy for them, only to get flatly refused for no real reason at all.

Momiji wasn’t a child. She wasn’t a fool. She was capable of seeing things from an opponent’s perspective, puzzling over the moves they might make this turn, next turn, ten turns in the future. She understood where Aya was coming from. It was just hard to admit it, because life had been so much simpler when Aya was just a snotty crow she hated and not an actual person with dreams, ambitions and emotions of her own.

She tipped back the last of her beer in silence.

Actually… It kind of pissed her off. It pissed her off that she was the bad guy here, that she was playing black and Aya was playing white. It pissed her off that she had no reason to be angry. It pissed her off that Aya, the gossip-mongering sketchy journalist that all Gensokyo laughed at, was being more honest than she was right now. Because if she knew how Aya felt, if she knew that she was wrong and just didn’t admit it, she’d be lying to herself.

It pissed her off so badly that she had to go and do something about it.

“Just for the record,” she said darkly, “I was being serious. There really isn’t anything I want.”

“I’m jealous of that too!” the yamabiko replied blithely, with a slow wag of her tail. “Since I am kind of a Buddhist monk. In training, anyway.”

But she was still perfectly happy to share a beer with a stranger who she thought might need a kind word. It probably didn’t fit well with Buddhist precepts, but Momiji thought there was something very admirable in that – especially in Gensokyo, where the strangers could be more dangerous than you could even imagine.

“Your friend is fighting with you, huh?” she murmured to herself. “Your friend must be an idiot.”

“She’s not an idiot. She’s just… you know. She’s Mysty.”

“Right. Well, I should probably go and do something about my idiot bird,” Momiji sighed, and stood up. “Thanks for the talk. It helped. I hope you make up with her soon. I’ll be rooting for you.”

“R-right! Thank you, miss Momiji! I hope you make up with your friend, too!”

“We’re not friends. But I appreciate it.”

She reached over and deftly scratched behind Kyouko’s ears. As a beast youkai herself, she naturally knew where the good spots were. It was a fleeting moment, a gesture of thanks for the yamabiko’s goodwill, and then it was over.

The mountain was calling. It was time to shout properly.

When she left, Mystia called her friend over to the bar, her eyes sharp and a frown plastered on her face.

“Why the heck was she scratching your ears?” the night sparrow grumbled. “I even gave her a free beer, and she repays me by trying to put the moves on my waitress? I’m definitely charging her double next time.”

“Mysty! It was a friendly ear scratch, not a romantic one!”

“Hmph.” Mystia paused to polish a used glass with a rag. “...My ear scratches are better, right?”

Kyouko thought about it. “Hm. She’s good at it, but I like yours because you keep your nails long.”

The night sparrow sighed. She was gratified by the answer, but it was one of the questions you weren’t supposed to think about and just answer straight away. But Kyouko was Kyouko – diligent and conscientious. Of course she’d take the time to think before she gave an answer.

It was annoying sometimes, but she didn’t dislike that about her.

“Well, that’s fine. I’ll get even better with practice.” Mystia giggled just a little, as clear and charming as a bell. “Hey. You should sleep over at mine tonight. If you do, I won’t tell Byakuren that you were drinking beer on duty.”

“Oh, shoot! I did it without thinking… What if they smell it on my breath tomorrow? Mysty, what am I gonna do?”

The rest of the patrons laughed along; Kyouko’s clumsiness was widely considered one of her most charming features. By the time the night was over, most of them had forgotten Aya and Momiji’s spat had ever happened; it was simply one more argument, insignificant beneath the uncaring stars.

But somewhere, they were out there: a different kind of bird, and a different kind of beast. Maybe too different, after all.

But Kyouko was rooting for them, all the same.

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular belief, there were in fact isolated pockets of Gensokyo where you could go several days, perhaps even a week, without having your door kicked down by an angry woman with an outrageous hair accessory and an equally outrageous temper. They were few and far between, but they existed, their locations a closely guarded secret.

One thing was for sure, though: Aya’s office was not one of them.

The culprit, one Momiji Inubashiri, walked into the office with a swagger that was usually reserved for people who didn’t have a long and storied history of getting their ass beaten by the occupant. Her jaw was squared, her tokin hat perched jauntily between her ears, and her eyebrows immaculately fluffed. For once – just this once – the world was about to experience peak Momiji performance.

Her opponent, Aya Shameimaru, had visible bags under her eyes and a black sooty smudge on her cheek that suggested she’d fallen asleep on her inkstone again. She narrowed her eyes, and twirled her pen threateningly.

“Ayaya. Look, you know the door was open, right? As in, not locked? So you could have just pushed it, instead of kicking it off the hinges for no reason?” she pointed out irritably. “Do you know how annoying it is to get hinges up on this mountain? I ought to garnish your wages to pay for replacements.”

“Do what you like,” Momiji sniffed. She took a long step forward, nudging a discarded bottle of energy tonic aside with her toe. She watched it roll away in disdain. “I thought I got rid of these. And would it kill you not to leave the empty bottles on the floor? It’s only been twelve hours, and you’re already sliding back into bad habits.”

“I’m just getting a head start and prepping some filler articles for next week. Since I won’t have an assistant anymore,” the crow retorted sourly. “Actually, since I’m such a good boss, you can just take the day off. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out – oh, wait, it can’t.”

Momiji ignored her, which was a relatively new tactic in the wolf’s repertoire. Ignoring people wasn’t what Momiji did. She was a patrol tengu, born and raised to spot intruders, raise the alarm, and fight (and lose) valiantly. Moreover, Aya was usually just too annoying to ignore. But today, she merely took another long step forward, her expression dignified and grave. She kept approaching until she was within spitting distance of the newspaper tengu, a sure sign of an incoming fight.

But she carried on walking straight past her, and with a single sweep of her arm, sent all of Aya’s manuscripts, her inkstone, and her stationary tumbling off her desk to the floor.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Aya spat.

“Oh, sorry. Since you insist on leaving your garbage on the floor, I thought I’d put the rest of the trash there too,” Momiji replied coolly. “I need the space, anyway.”

Aya’s patience was now wearing dangerously thin. “Excuse me? Whose office do you think this is?”

“Ours, for the remainder of the week.” The wolf continued to summarily ignore her. Instead, she took out a folding shogi set, placed it on Aya’s desk, and began to set up the pieces. “Sit down. We’re playing.”

“Did you spend all night getting drunk or something, Momiji? I don’t play shogi. I don’t have time to play shogi. We don’t all lead leisurely lives in the patrol corps like you.”

“I thought you’d been prepping articles all night? In that case, you’re ahead on work, so you’ve got time.” She pointed brusquely to Aya’s chair, as if implying she couldn’t see it. “Sit down.”

“And what if I don’t, Momiji? What are you going to do about it?” Aya asked, arching an eyebrow.

The tension in the room was high. At any point, Aya expected the wolf to cock back her shoulder and come in for a haymaker, at which point the real fun could begin. She hadn’t lost a single fight to Momiji yet, and after their argument last night, she was feeling just a little vengeful.

But instead, Momiji shrugged.

“Nothing,” the patrol tengu said lightly. “Nothing will happen, nothing will change, and the situation will stay exactly as it is. I’ll leave you at the end of the week, and you’ll backslide into your old habits. Maybe you’ll manage for a little while with the correspondents helping out, but I wouldn’t count on them helping forever unless you put in the legwork, and you don’t have time to put in the legwork.”

Aya’s eyes narrowed. Even after being rudely awoken from a nap she didn’t really intend to have, she was still the owner of one of Gensokyo’s sharper minds. If the ‘punishment’ for not doing what Momiji wanted was things staying as they were, then… “...So you’re saying that if I play, things will be different?”

“Maybe. Depends on if you win or not. If you do, I’ll leave the patrol corps and stay on as your assistant. Indefinitely.”

Momiji smirked. It was a little smug. A little wicked. The sharp points of her teeth peeked out from behind her lips.

“And if I lose?” Aya asked. “What will your demands be then?”

“Nothing. I don’t need to be rewarded for stomping a novice.” The wolf gestured to Aya’s chair again – a little more politely this time. “Go on. Sit. It’s your office, so I’ll stand.”

For a long moment, Aya Shameimaru considered her options. She thought about the possible angles, the traps that might lie in wait. She considered what Momiji’s motivations might be.

But as always, the wolf was inscrutable. Annoying and inscrutable. With a sigh, she took the seat. After all, in Gensokyo, the only way to deal with a trap was to blow through it with brute force.

“What are you getting out of this, Momiji?” she asked as the wolf deftly set up the pieces.

“Mm? I’m not really getting anything out of it. But you asked me last night what I wanted for staying on as your assistant, and I’ve decided I want you to beat me in shogi. Sente or gote?”

“Ayaya... Does it matter? You know there’s no chance of me winning. I barely remember how the pieces move.”

“Gote, then. You can observe what I’m doing and learn as you go.”

With a quick, deliberate motion, Momiji slid one of her pawns a single square forward. Gingerly, Aya mirrored it on her side of the board. The game had begun.

From what Aya could see, it had to be some kind of test. Momiji had a reputation for being a strong player, not just in shogi, but in daishogi, the more complicated variant favoured by the patrol tengu. She couldn’t seriously be expecting Aya to win. She hadn’t even bothered to give her a proper handicap.

Plainly, there was some hidden condition that Momiji wanted her to fulfil. Maybe it was as simple as making the game entertaining, or bravely playing to completion without complaining about how one-sided the skill gap made things. It seemed pretty unlikely that playing half-heartedly would get her what she wanted. So she took the time to consider each move before she made it, looking carefully at the wolf’s face to gauge her reaction.

By contrast, Momiji barely waited for Aya’s finger to leave her piece before she took her move. It could have been mistaken for carelessness, if not for the fact that she was ruthlessly cutting off Aya’s options and advancing her own, as if she knew all the moves in advance. Perhaps this was also an application of her clairvoyance, to see moves in the distant future.

After a brief scuffle of pawn exchanges, during which Aya’s formation collapsed entirely and Momiji’s did not, the wolf tengu finally spoke.

“I’m a competitive kind of person.”

Aya blinked. She found herself smiling, although mostly because she was bewildered and didn’t know what to do with her face. “Ayaya. Really? I never noticed. It’s not like almost every interaction you’ve had with me for literally years has screamed ‘sore loser’ or anything like that.”

She looked carefully at Momiji’s expression. The wolf was smiling, but it was small and wry, almost self-deprecating.

“Well. Maybe it was obvious to you. But to be honest? I forgot,” the wolf admitted. Aya moved a pawn, and Momiji punished her for it with barely a glance. “I’m good at seeing things at a distance, but perhaps that makes it easier to lose track of things when they’re too close.”

Aya shook her head in disbelief “How do you forget your own personality? Did you get wrapped up in some kind of incident or something?”

“...The Patrol Corps is all about ‘unity’. We sleep together, eat together, bathe together. When one of us moves, the others follow. For a lot of us, it’s like being family. Closer than family, even.” Momiji’s eyebrows furrowed as she moved her pieces. “We don’t compete. Not really. Even dai-shogi is just a way to waste time. Most of us don’t really care whether we win or lose, as long as it takes a while.”

Pieces clacked as they made their moves. Aya had already stopped paying attention to the board in front of her; she was a journalist, after all. She only had eyes for the story.

“But personally? I like to win. If I win all the time, then that’s fine. But when I lose, it irritates me.”

Aya rolled her eyes. “So you’re just an ordinary, normal person, then. Right.”

“Maybe.” The pieces clack. Most of Aya’s army is on Momiji’s side now, dropped into position by a practised hand. “But I think I lost track of the idea that it’s losing that irritates me, rather than the people I lose to.”

Aya said nothing. Sometimes, as an interviewer, that was the best thing to say. Sometimes people were like sake bottles; if you tipped them just enough, everything would pour out by itself without you having to do anything more.

“...At the time, I think you were bragging about the Bunbunmaru. Being loud and obnoxious about it. Same as any other day, really. But I thought you were being cocky and looking down on people, so I wanted to put you in your place. I lost.” Momiji continued to quietly mop up the remainder of Aya’s forces, her eyes locked on something well beyond the game board. “I was annoyed that I lost, so I tried again the next time I saw you. And lost again. And again, and again, and again. It irritated me more and more, until I just started getting angry every time I saw you.”

The next few moves continued in silence. The game was drawing to a close. Momiji put her index finger on a piece, paused, and took it away again.

“It’s been years, and I still haven’t won. I still haven’t grown. I do the same things day after day. I hunt, I sleep, I work. But I’m not advancing. I’m a pawn that’s never promoted. I’m meant to be fine with that, since that was the role I was born to. I don’t think I am, though. I want to be more. I want to be stronger. I want to win.”

Aya looked down at the board. It was a massacre, really. Even a novice like her could see there was no chance at victory from current position. Had she passed Momiji’s test, she wondered?

“So work for me!” she said, tapping her finger on the desk. “If you want to be more, if you want to advance, if you’re sick of being in the same place where you can’t stretch your legs and challenge yourself, then I can give you that. I might be the only person who’ll give you that. You don’t have to be a pawn, Momiji. I’ll promote you. You can be my general. I’ll train you. We’ve got time now, and once you learn the ropes, we’ll have even more. Come on. It makes sense. You know it does.”

The more she spoke, the more sure she became. She’d seen it before: the flashes of wasted potential hidden behind Momiji’s surly exterior, doomed to go unrealised by her superior’s complacency. The last two weeks had only made that clearer. The wolf tengu had the attitude and the drive to be something much greater than she was, if only she was given the right conditions.

Momiji as an untrained assistant had turned the Bunbunmaru around and made it manageable again. How much more potent could she be as a trained right hand?

The wolf smiled. She’d done more smiling over one game of shogi than Aya had seen from her in all their years of squabbling put together.

Then, without any warning at all, she shot her hand out and flicked Aya hard on the nose.

“No. The deal was that I’d work for you if you beat me at shogi. Right now, you’re in what we would describe as a ‘losing position’,” the wolf said, waving a hand over the scattered remains of Aya’s army. “Although you haven’t lost yet, I suppose.”

“Wha – really – so – You told me that whole story, and you’re still not even going to consider it? Then what was the point? Give me back the time I could have spent writing articles, then!” Aya squawked.

“Point? You asked me what I wanted, so I told you. You wondered what you’d done to piss me off for all these years, so I told you. That’s it.”

“...You’re a strange one, you know that? I almost preferred it when you punched me,” Aya groused. She made to clear the board, since it was clear the whole thing had been an exercise in futility, but Momiji caught her wrist.

“Ah. We don’t clear the board until the final move’s been played.”

“Then just win already so I can have my desk back. It’s still your move.”

“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s customary.” The wolf gave an exaggerated shrug. “If you want to know the reason, then get off your rear and find out. You’re a journalist, so do some investigating.”

Aya sighed. This felt… well, it felt more like their relationship was previously, before the argument at the lamprey stand, but she couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied. She’d given it her best shot, but that didn’t feel like much consolation.

“So… this is really it? You’re really going to go back to your old job, just like that?” she asked.

Momiji rolled her shoulders. “Well, until next week.”

“Next week? What?”

“I said I’d work for you if you beat me at shogi. I never said you had to beat me first try.” She looked down at Aya with an expression of studied disdain. “To be honest, this game was a disaster. We’ll have to start you out with an 8 piece handicap and work our way up. I’ll have to come by once a week to turn in my shogi puzzles as a correspondent anyway, so we can play then. Make sure you’re actually trying those puzzles, too. It’s a good way to get better quickly. And close your mouth. You look like even more of an idiot than normal.”

There was a slow, stately wag in Momiji’s tail as she turned away from her slack-jawed companion and walked to the door of the office. Recovering just in time, Aya called after her.

“Where do you think you’re going now? You’re still my assistant for the next few days, you know!”

“I seem to remember you giving me the day off,” the wolf shrugged. “I thought I’d spend it in some serious sword practice. I won’t feel satisfied until I’ve beaten you at least once. If I can beat you in a fight before you can beat me at shogi, I’ll be happy.” She paused. “And for the love of all that's sacred, keep up on your damn hygiene. If I can smell you before I can see you, I won't work for you no matter how many games you win."

With that, she left – leaving Aya with nothing but a gobsmacked expression, a hole in her office wall where the door used to be, and a shogi board occupying her desk while her manuscripts had been dumped on the floor. Even though the final move had never been played, Aya still felt that she had very much lost.

“Tch. She was cuter when I could bully her,” the crow muttered, and turned back to her desk. If Momiji was going to leave her games half-finished all the time, she’d have to invest in a table. A table! For shogi! A game she didn’t even play!

But she’d learn. Firstly, she had her pride as a crow tengu. Secondly, she’d be getting a cute (?) assistant out of it, eventually. Theoretically.

But thirdly and most importantly, Momiji Inubashiri was apparently not just a sore loser, but a lousy winner as well. And with that in mind, Aya resolved to beat her as soon as possible.

Chapter Text

“Take good care of my baby, okay?”

“Technically, it’s my baby, not yours…”

Nitori held the camera up to the light, and looked it over with a critical eye. The camera’s owner – adoptive mother? – Aya Shameimaru was lounging in the comfy chair that Nitori kept for important customers.

The camera seemed to be in good shape. It usually was. As annoying a customer as Aya could be, she was genuine about how important the camera was to her. Supposedly she’d been known to turn and take ongoing bullets in the back just to make sure nothing happened to it, although that was a completely unsubstantiated rumour. Either way, for a camera that was in daily use, it was holding up quite nicely.

That said, it wasn’t as though she could give it a completely clean bill of health. Aya handled her camera a lot, and that meant a lot of grime ended up building up in the gaps and crevices between the parts. The fact that she usually bought her dinners from cheap restaurants or the tengu cafeteria didn’t exactly help, either; the food tended to be greasy, and the fastest tengu in Gensokyo wasn’t known for taking time to wash her hands.

“I think we can get away with just a deep clean this time,” Nitori said, rendering her verdict. “As usual, for a rush job I’ll need –”

“Ayayaya. No need for a rush job this time, Nitori. Take your time and give my baby the care she deserves.”

For the first time since Aya had walked in, Nitori properly looked at her.

To kappa, technology came before people. That was a given. How much it came before people really depended on the person in question, but generally speaking, if you presented Nitori with a camera and a customer, she’d give her attention to the camera nine times out of ten. Aya wasn’t necessarily ugly or even unattractive under the right lighting, but she wasn’t a camera. Not even close.

But this was the first time in Nitori’s memory that Aya hadn’t asked for a rush job. She always asked for a rush job. News didn’t wait, and neither did deadlines; without her trusty camera, the newspaper tengu was effectively disarmed and unable to do her job.

“Are you sick?” she asked, bluntly.

No, she couldn’t be sick. The tengu in front of her looked like the picture of health – glossy hair, glossy feathers, glossy skin. Glossy skin? Actually, since when was Aya’s skin good? Usually she had a pale, dingy kind of complexion that told tales of too much alcohol, too little food, and too few baths.

With a new hypothesis in mind, Nitori took a loud and deliberate sniff.

“Um, Nitori? I know social skills aren’t really a kappa thing, and I do value our working relationship, but there’s a limit to how rude you can be…”

“Sorry. It’s just that not asking for a rush job is pretty out of character for you.”

“Ohoho, Nitori. I’m not the same old Aya Shameimaru, you know?” the tengu said with a wink. Why was she winking? Did her eyes work properly? Had she been hit with some sort of horrible chronic wink disease? “Right now, your humble and honest reporter has plenty of time on her hands!”

There was an expectant pause into which a bold and lively conversationalist might have inserted a ‘why’. Less exuberant speakers might be let off the hook with a mere ‘that’s nice’. Nitori was not either of these. She filled the silence with the cold, dead-eyed stare peculiar to aquatic lifeforms.

“You see,” Aya went on, unperturbed, “thanks to the efforts of me and my dear, sweet, kind, cute little ex-assistant Momiji, the Bunbunmaru has been going from strength to strength. In fact, its influence is so great that I’ve been asked to stop production for a little while just to let the competition catch up.”

Nitori knew for a fact that Momiji would have been apoplectic with rage if she’d heard Aya describe her like that, which was probably why Aya had done it. It was now common knowledge on the mountain that she and Momiji had joined forces for a time; apparently a lot of bets were made on such diverse topics as who would tear out whose throat, how long it would take until first blood, and (oddly) whether they would make out before they killed each other.

While they had both come out of the trial period very much alive (to the disappointment of many), both had been changed deeply by the experience. Aya’s Bunbunmaru, which was synonymous with her to the point that it was basically her entire personality as far as wary onlookers were concerned, had suddenly surged in quality and ingenuity, presumably powered by the last dregs of Momiji’s sweat and blood remaining from her servitude.

As for the white wolf tengu, her packmates in the Patrol Corps reported that she had grown quiet and withdrawn, with little apparent interest in her old hobbies. She had even given up playing Daishogi, claiming it took up too much time, though she could sometimes be persuaded to indulge in the regular (or, as the patrol tengu thought, inferior) variant.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the pair’s habit of sniping at each other if they happened to cross paths, with Aya opting for demeaning ‘flattery’, and Momiji usually going the more direct route of calling Aya a pig with wings. So far things had yet to come to blows, although Momiji sometimes did hurl food in the newspaper tengu’s face, which she deftly caught.

In short, nobody really knew what was going on with them, but they knew something was going on and were taking the opportunity to gossip shamelessly about it. Nitori, wiser than most, knew better than to ask.

“Soooo,” the kappa said, after repeating Aya’s statement in her head a few times to glean the meaning, “your boss put her foot down and suspended you?”

Aya’s smile grew slightly brittle. “Ayaya. That’s such an unsavoury way to put it. I was just planning a few stories that might do better if they were aged a little – just long enough for my boss to use them as leverage against certain individuals.”

“That’s even more unsavoury, isn’t it?”

“That’s the way of the world, Nitori. It’s not ideal, but it’s a bit better than it was, when Great Tengu were making up accidents to garnish people’s stipends and never facing any consequences, isn’t it?”

Nitori hummed, because she didn’t really care; tengu business was tengu business, and they were welcome to it. As long as it didn’t directly affect her or her friends, it wasn’t that interesting.

“So, I have some downtime. I’m still collecting leads as usual, but I don’t have to do any of the fiddly bits like writing or typesetting, so I’m having quite a blast, honestly,” the crow gloated. “So, I can touch base with my correspondents, have my camera maintained properly, and – oh?”

Aya broke off her speech abruptly, because she had noticed something in Nitori’s house and she couldn’t help but be nosy about it. After all, was being nosy not the god-given right, nay, the austere duty, of a newspaper reporter? With a speed that far outstripped Nitori’s amphibian waddle, she zoomed across the room to more closely examine what she’d found.

“Oho! That’s quite a nice shogi board you’ve got here, Nitori!” she called. “And look! You even left the game with one move to go! That means your opponent intends to visit you again, you know. I researched all about it after a certain disobedient puppy left her toys lying around in my office.” She paused to study the board more carefully. “Were you sente or gote?”

“...Sente,” Nitori admitted.

Aya whistled. “Wow, you got thrashed. I know a crushing defeat when I see one. Could I interest you in a copy of the Bunbunmaru? We’ve been running some shogi puzzles that will definitely bring your game to the next level.”

“No thanks,” was the kappa’s automatic reply.

“Hm. Shame,” Aya replied breezily; it was a question she was used to asking and an answer she was used to receiving. “It really is a nice set, though. It’s not kappa made, is it? You can tell it’s been hand-carved, and the symbols are hand-painted, too. Where did you get it?”

“From a friend,” Nitori replied woodenly.

Aya grinned.

Aya grinning did not particularly mean anything to Nitori, who often saw the crow don the same smile a used car salesman wore in the outside world and hadn’t bothered to learn the differences. But a more experienced (or, as some would say, traumatised) Aya-watcher would have realised she was playing with her food, and had been for some time.

“I didn’t know you had friends, Nitori,” she quipped.

“Um, I know that social skills aren’t exactly an Aya thing, but there’s a limit to how rude you can be…”

“Ayaya! I’ll let you have that one. I suppose I deserved it.” The jibe rolled effortlessly off Aya’s back; her questionable reputation as a reporter had inoculated her to anything short of the most brutal and direct put-downs. “So, care for a game?”

“...I didn’t know you played,” Nitori replied carefully. If she had, she probably would have hidden the board.

“Oh, I just started recently, and I’m looking to improve. Surely you can spare a game for one of your reliable customers?”

Nitori looked at the board doubtfully. “I don’t want to lose the position of the game we were having, so… sorry.”

Something about that seemed to tickle Aya, and her grin only spread wider. “Ayaya. When we look at it like that, isn’t this whole leaving the game unfinished thing kind of possessive? ‘Oh, beloved Nitori, I must leave you now, but your next game… belongs to me!’ Ohoho. The patrol tengu get so jealous over their toys.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, if you don’t want your shogi friend to know you’ve been cheating on her, how’s this?” The tengu snatched her camera out of Nitori’s hands and took a few casual snaps of the board. “We can just reset things to how they were when we’re finished. It’s not infidelity if you don’t leave any evidence.”

“That’s a dangerous thing to hear from a ‘pure and honest’ reporter.”

Nitori folded her arms and sighed. Tengu could get awfully pushy to begin with, and in that respect, Aya was an exemplar of the breed. Her many years spent hawking newspapers nobody wanted had left her with an inability to accept no for an answer.

“Fine. Just one game,” she said at last.

That was the thing about Aya: for all her personality issues, she really was the fastest and snoopiest of Gensokyo’s reporters. Since she couldn’t run and she couldn’t hide, the only thing left for Nitori to do was hurry up and get it over with.

“Well, that certainly was a game,” the kappa said impassively.

To be clear, Nitori was not particularly good at shogi. For her, it was a passing hobby; if not for the fact that Momiji liked to play a game or two whenever she stopped by, Nitori never would have bothered. It didn’t grab her attention like inventing did; unlike inventions, shogi’s possibilities were ultimately finite, no matter how many separate gamestates there might be.

But, while she would never play shogi if not for Momiji, that meant she was used to playing against Momiji, who was such a strong player that she often casually sandbagged so that her games with Nitori felt closer, even though she already gave her a handicap at the start of the game.

Compared to that, mopping the floor with Aya, a complete novice, was almost effortless.

“Ayayaya… Good game, good game. I really can’t figure out where I’m going wrong,” the crow sighed.

Nitori, on the other hand, could. Shogi may not have been her special interest, but she still had the analytical mind of a kappa. Aside from basic errors expected of a novice, Aya’s great flaw was that she would pounce on any opportunity that revealed itself. She was good at spotting those opportunities, but that was part of the problem: Nitori had been able to lead her by the nose and lure her into trap after trap, just by dangling a juicy bit of material advantage in front of her. Maybe that philosophy worked for Aya in her everyday life, where the scoops had to be fresh and she was strong enough to blow through any traps with brute force, but on the shogi board? It was a liability.

Incidentally, Momiji was by no means a perfect player either. She usually played daishogi with the rest of the patrol tengu, which was more of a social exercise than an actual competition. This had given her the bad habit of making moves that did nothing but stretch out the game, or taking more circuitous routes to a goal she could have easily achieved more directly.

Nitori herself played efficiently, but didn’t bother to plan ahead more than she really had to; she simply wasn’t that invested in the outcome. Sometimes she made stupid moves just for the fun of it. Experimentation was more fun than mastery, in her opinion; while she recognised her own habits and weaknesses, she wasn’t particularly bothered about fixing them and instead simply tried to play to her strengths.

Strengths that, unlike Aya’s, actually existed.

“Well, thank you for indulging me, Nitori. I’d love to play a game or two another time,” Aya said. Then, with a smirk: “By the way… Where is Momiji at the moment?”

Nitori folded her arms and arched her eyebrow. “How should I know? I’m not her keeper. Can’t you ask the patrol tengu yourself?”

Aya’s grin widened. “Ayaya. Of course you’re not her keeper. But you do play shogi with her, don’t you? If you didn’t, you would have wondered why I brought her up all of a sudden. You already had her on the brain.”

“E-eh? That kind of shaky reasoning is exactly why everyone calls you a dubious reporter!”

“Heh heh. Apparently there’s a saying in the outside world, Nitori. ‘It’s only libel if it’s in print’. In other words, I can operate on whatever shaky reasoning I want as long as I don’t commit it to paper!” the crow gloated. “And with the power of that shaky reasoning and my reporter’s hunch, I confirmed the information for myself, so it’s completely sound!”

“Tch. Outside world reporters are something else…”

Nitori balled her fists in frustration as Aya chuckled to herself. This was exactly the reason the crow tengu wasn’t that popular – she was good, but by god did she know it.

“Why do you even want to know where she is?”

“Hm… I just thought I’d drop in on my favourite puppy.”

“She’d rip your head off if she heard that,” Nitori told her sourly.

“She’d try. But Nitori, did you know? Dear little Momiji spends a lot of her time yapping, but she’s actually surprisingly nice.”

“She’s not surprisingly nice, she’s just nice. The only person she yaps at is you.”
“But she still left a game unfinished in my office,” Aya said, grinning. “And, did you know? Apparently, the patrol tengu are pretty serious about manners when it comes to shogi. You have to be respectful to your opponent when you’re at the board.” She held up a finger for emphasis, like a professor explaining an abstract theorem. “In order words! Just sitting down to play means they’re prepared to treat you with respect. Momiji sat down to play with me, and she didn’t insult me a single time!”

Nitori shook her head in exasperation, her cobalt hair flicking gently. “You know that’s not a win, don’t you? She usually treats people with respect without being forced to by a shogi game.”

Unfortunately, Aya seemed to be summarily ignoring her. “So, Nitori. Here’s a question. What do you call it when a girl likes somebody, but can’t express it properly and has to do it indirectly?”

“How about ‘not this’?!”

“They call it ‘cute’, Nitori. That’s what they call it,” Aya declared, as smug as water is wet. “Momiji is a cute little puppy, whether she likes it or not.”

Nitori pinched the bridge of her nose; she felt a headache starting to come on. Was this how all tengu were, or were Aya and Momiji just a special breed? At first she’d been happy when she’d heard Momiji had landed the spot as Aya’s assistant, because she thought it might put some fire back into the wolf, but she hadn’t counted on Aya coming to her house to… flirt, by proxy? Was that what this was? It felt like a drunk fisherman telling the whole bar how much he loved his wife, except Aya was affectionately describing a woman who could barely tolerate her for half an hour without throwing hands.

“Ayaya… Well, I suppose I might as well check around for her. I get the feeling I’m wearing out my welcome,” the crow said, giving Nitori what she probably thought was a charmingly self-aware wink. It really wasn’t. “I’ll be back in a few days to pick up my camera. Treat her well, okay?”

“Wait, I didn’t quote you a pri–”

The tengu was already gone, bustling from Nitori’s house at top speed. She really was the most exhausting customer Nitori had ever dealt with, although that also made her the most interesting.

Nitori took a moment to set the shogi board back to its former position – a few moves away from an obvious victory for Momiji. She still couldn’t believe Aya had worked out it was Momiji who had been here, although she probably had some inkling that the wolf and Nitori were friends.

“...Still, she really does jump at the first opportunity you put in front of her, huh?” Nitori murmured. “Thanks to that, I was able to distract her from the real secret.”

She went and turned around the sign on her door to say she was closed, locked it behind her, and retreated to the workshop. She left Aya’s camera on the table, where it would sit, alone, until she was ready for it.

Chapter Text

Knowledge was not a right, but a privilege.

That was the conclusion that every great witch – no, every person – would eventually come to, given enough thought. Every factoid, every knack, every compound magical formula, represented a trade: one of time, effort, pain, experience. Humans flourished in the outside world because they had learned to cheat that cost by passing the knowledge of one person along in more and more efficient ways, until even fools could comprehend the secrets that made up the bones of the world.

Perhaps it was for that reason that witches and magicians, who breathed knowledge and leveraged it as arms and armour, remained the most humanlike of youkai. They were not ‘other’, but simply deeper. An expression of an impulse that already existed in the soul of man.

There was more to magic than knowledge. Dreams, passions, and obsessions were the underpinnings of the great tapestry that was the arcane. But those who did not know could not dream in the way that magic demanded; they could not direct their passions towards something they had no awareness of, and they could form no attachment to horizons they did not know to exist. Knowledge, ultimately, was not everything. But it was the first step of the long road, and lingered in every subsequent footprint along it.

It was in this sense that every witch’s grimoire was a diary, whether they intended it or not. It was a record of the things they searched for, their successes and their many failures, the new paths they forged and the old that they discarded.

For a human, like Marisa, who still thought in human ways and dreamed human dreams, it could remain as just that.

But for a true witch, those who had cast off their scruples and their obligations to drive yet further ahead into the mists of the unknown, a grimoire was a beating heart: a summation of all that they were, so deeply personal that no other could be admitted. Witches did not pass along their knowledge as humans did. They hoarded it, until their bones finally became dust.

Knowledge was a privilege. It was precious. It represented a trade of time, of effort, of pain, of experience. And it should continue to do so, no matter what. That was the viewpoint of a witch.

Alice Margatroid’s grimoire, her beating heart, was locked tightly. It never left her grasp. It was the one thing she was prepared to defend jealously, throwing off her cowardly habit of never giving her all if need be.

But if you asked, and you were pleasant, and you did not spirit away books from her library or flip up the skirts on her dolls to comment on their meticulously detailed undergarments, she might find it within herself to tell you what was written on the very first page. If she did, she would do so out of pity. Knowledge was a privilege, but many people, witches and youkai and humans alike, would sadly never be able to understand the truth that Alice had to bear:

It was possible to be loved too much.

“Again?”

Alice arched an eyebrow, even though she knew it was useless. Marisa Kirisame was immune to the arching of eyebrows, so frequently were they levied against her.

“Well, one thing led ta another.”

“How exactly am I meant to interpret that, given the situation…?”

“Exactly how it is: an outrage,” Reimu mutters darkly. “I swear, there’s going to be a reckoning for this. I don’t care what Kasen says…”

Alice looked over the two of them once more, and despaired.

It wasn’t uncommon for Marisa Kirisame to turn up on her doorstep. The girl was surprisingly neighbourly, always coming over to chat, exchange notes, ask to borrow a cup of sugar and some of Alice’s spare books and maybe some reagents and also a little bit of thread and did she perhaps have a pry bar she wasn’t using and so on and so forth. It was pleasant, after a fashion, although Alice found these visits lost their charm if they happened more than twice a month.

It also wasn’t uncommon for Reimu to be with her. In fact, most of Gensokyo found that the two of them together was an extremely welcome sight; if Marisa and Reimu were in the same room as it each other, it meant there was no incident afoot and Gensokyo was at peace. As soon as Gensokyo’s incident resolution specialists split up, that was when the fireworks starter and the heads began to roll.

So, Reimu and Marisa showing up together was not, necessarily, a problem – even if it was a touch inconvenient for Alice and the state of her larder.

No, the heart of the issue was that they had showed up in their underwear.

Reimu and Marisa both had bold personalities, but contrary to popular belief, they still had a mostly human sense of modesty tucked away in the back of their minds, infrequently used but perfectly functional. Left to their own devices, neither would willingly choose to wander Gensokyo in their skivvies.

Yet, here they were, with a vest and a pair of bloomers apiece, making themselves Alice’s problem. For the second time in two weeks. The mind boggled. The fingers ached for a neck to squeeze.

“Why does this keep happening?” she asked, folding her arms for fear she might do something with them she’d regret.

“I know, right? It is kinda pathetic,” Marisa replied jovially, her arms behind her head. “Gettin’ kicked out of your own shrine and all.”

Reimu immediately turned on her, a vein popping furiously in her temple. “Excuse me? You got kicked out too, you know!”

“Yeah, but I don’t live there.”

“You’ve got bedding! A cushion! Two sets of spare clothes! If you don’t live at my shrine, then take your stuff out of my closet and quit eating my snacks!”

The second part of that commandment, Alice noted, was delivered with considerably more passion than the first.

“Eh? But the whole reason I keep that stuff there is because you told me to, right? At my house it just gets all musty, and you kept complainin’ that you had to sit around smellin’ me.”

“Then clean!”

“I’ll clean when I’m dead.”

“Oh, is that all it’ll take? How about you hold still for a second, then?”

“Ahem.” Alice cleared her throat, in a vain attempt to direct the conversation to more productive and less violent places.

At length and in fits and starts, she managed to tease out the circumstances that had brought them here.

To put it simply: it was a warm day.

It was a warm day, and Reimu, whose infamous armpit vents were not providing her with sufficient cooling for her active lifestyle, decided that the best way of dealing with things was to lounge around the shrine in her underwear, sipping tea and complaining intermittently to nobody in particular.

“Which is fine. It’s my shrine. I live there. I should be allowed to sit around in my underwear if I want to,” the miko made sure to stress.

But then Marisa came over, as Marisa did. She had two bottles of beer that she’d chilled with ice magic – once there had been three, but accidents happened – and some salted cucumbers she’d filched from Nitori in exchange for some discussions regarding thrust and thermodynamics.

“And then,” Marisa carried on, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “by the time she’d had half a beer, she was undressin’ me with her eyes.”

“Because I felt hot just looking at you!” Reimu bawled. “You were wearing black! In the height of summer! And that skirt with the weird ruffles underneath! What kind of person does that?!”

“The ruffles are for heat dispersion. Right, Alice?”

Alice, who had had a hand in making said ruffles and did not particularly enjoy her needlecraft being dismissed as ‘weird’, nodded primly.

“An’ then, she starts just grabbin’ at me and takin’ my clothes off,” Marisa carried on with a roguish grin. “That’s about when Aunn-chan and Kasen decided to walk in.”

The tableau that greeted Kasen and Aunn hardly needed to be explained: the Hakurei Shrine maiden and her closest friend, both half-dressed and slick with sweat, pawing at each other with half-empty beer bottles sitting next to them. In broad daylight, no less! According to Aunn, the Hakurei God was crying. How Aunn knew this was anybody’s guess, because Kasen’s first move was to clap a hand over her eyes to prevent her seeing anything indecent and her second was to soundly thrash both offending parties before tossing them bodily from the shrine.

“I did ask for my clothes back, o’ course, but you know how Kasen is. She was yelling that if we were gonna go at it like beasts in a place of worship, we could go naked like beasts as well.” Marisa rubbed her nose. “Ain’t she a little behind the times, though? We’ve been to the Animal Realm, and almost all of the beasts are wearin’ clothes.”

“I don’t care how behind the times she is,” Reimu muttered dangerously. “I’m gonna wring her neck and pour natto down her throat until she begs for death. I’ll plant soybeans on her grave.”

“Well, that’s the story. After that, we came straight here, ‘cause I figured, who do I know that knows about clothes? It’s gotta be Alice,” the black-white – currently all white – witch finished. “Plus, all our stuff is back at the shrine, so we can’t really fight. I got a couple o’ spell cards stashed away, but apart from that, no dice.”

“You’ve got spell cards on you?” Reimu asked, whipping her head around. “Where?”

“C’mon, Reimu. That ain’t a question you can ask a girl in polite company.”

Sometimes, a person’s eyes told a story. Reimu’s wrote a novel. First they went to Marisa’s face, as if still in disbelief of what she’d heard. Then they went to her vest, before flicking away immediately, as if completely disregarding the possibility that anything could be concealed in an area of such… topographical monotony. Then they went to her bloomers, back to her face, then to her bloomers again, then she raised her eyes skyward as if praying to some benevolent god to intercede and get her out of the situation she was in, and then to her bloomers again. At last, Reimu looked very squarely and deliberately at Alice, washing her hands of the whole thing.

Alice sighed. She felt it was expected of her.

“Well,” she said at last, “you’d better come in, I suppose. I can’t have you wandering the Forest of Magic like this. I may have some spare outfits I can lend you, although I expect them back promptly.”

“See? Toldja,” Marisa said, nudging Reimu with her elbow. “Alice is the best, ain’t she? Top ten witches in Gensokyo, for sure.”

“You have to name nine other witches before that qualifies as a compliment.”

The two continued to bicker as Alice led them into the house. As she led them through the hallway to the kitchen (where the miko’s foul mood could be ammeliorated with pastries and cold non-alcoholic drinks), Alice’s dolls alighted from the eaves and fell into formation behind them.

Was it vanity, perhaps, that the Seven-Coloured Puppeteer never went anywhere without a procession? In truth, she barely remembered summoning them. To her, controlling her dolls was as easy as breath; sometimes they seemed to march more according to her thoughts than her fingers.

Marisa, true to form, took time to greet each doll by name as they joined the fleet. “Hey, Bucharesti! You’re lookin’ spry. London, Paris! Been a while since I seen you two. L’il Hourai, you been behavin’?”

It was an oddity of hers – one of many that Alice had noticed over the course of their acquaintance. No matter how often she greeted the dolls, they would never greet her back, and Alice never so much as lifted a finger to provide the illusion that they would: no waving, no nods of the head, none of the cute pantomimes she put on for the other village children.

But Marisa greeted them all the same, under the impression that treating them like people would somehow endow them with the autonomy that Alice so desired. In deference to that, Alice didn’t interfere; the moment her dolls finally took their first unabetted actions would be so much sweeter that way. Besides, as a witch-to-be, Marisa deserved to test her hypothesis without bias.

“Eh? You’re a new face, ain’tcha?” she asked, singling out one of the dolls that had settled quietly into formation. “Hey, Alice. What’s the name for this one, huh?”

Alice flicked her eyes to the doll. It was blonde-haired, like the majority of her dolls; she didn’t make them that way out of any particular preference, but more because her own hair was the easiest to use when crafting them. The workmanship seemed no better or worse at a glance than any other doll she’d made. If there was any deviation from the standard pattern she used for mass production, it was the small ornaments in the hair and the shortish ponytail. The dress, too, was a little different; while most of her dolls wore one piece dresses, which were easier and quicker to stitch, this one had a blue dress over a white frock shirt.

“Oh, that one? It’s new,” Alice said indifferently, closing her eyes. “I haven’t given it a name.”

“That ain’t no good. Hm… Well, ya got Shanghai and Hourai, so what about Hawaii?”

“That’s not how you pronounce it, idiot,” Reimu cut in.

“Huh. That so? What about Hokkai, then? Ya don’t even really need the full Hokkaido since you can use the ‘do’ from Hokkai Doll.”

“Don’t just name the doll based on a pun.”

“Aw, c’mon, Reimu. What would you name it, then?”

“I barely remember anybody’s names to start with! I’m not going to waste valuable space in my head on remembering names for a doll.”

“That’s quite enough. If I decide that doll needs a name, I’ll give her one myself,” Alice interjected. “For now, why not busy yourself deciding what pastries you’d like? I baked just yesterday.”

Both girls immediately broadened their step towards the kitchen. They were both quite honest when it came to their stomachs.

Neither of them had ever bothered to ask why Alice still baked or cooked, even after casting off her need for food in the process of becoming a magician. Perhaps they just thought it was a habit, left over from her days as a human; they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, but they wouldn’t be right, either.

She did it not because cooking was required, but because it was meaningful. Cooking, ultimately, was the base form of magic; with knowledge, imagination, and skill, you took raw ingredients and alchemised them into something edible. Because a meal could have qualities that existed in none of the base ingredients, it was also a basic act of creation. Pulling something out of nothing.

So she cooked, and she baked, because she believed that doing so was part of her identity as a youkai. The fact that she got to sample her own creations, or that they made wonderful bribes for hungry yet morally irresponsible shrine maidens, were merely side benefits.

“Food’s great, but would you mind giving us some clothes first?” Reimu asked, having already sat down at the kitchen table and devoured three macarons in the blink of an eye. Quite what she thought ‘first’ meant, Alice didn’t know. “I’m fine sitting around my own place in my underwear, but doing it at somebody else’s house feels weird.”

“Eh? It’s only Alice, though,” Marisa shrugged. “Her house is basically my house, right?”

“Stop sleeping in random people’s houses, you floozy,” Reimu muttered.

“It ain’t random people. It’s just you, Alice, and maybe a couple of others. It’s better than staying at your place seven days a week, right?”

“You! Have! A! House!” Reimu shouted, banging her fists on the table for emphasis. A salt shaker tried to make a daring escape, aided by gravity; Alice rescued it with one of her many dolls before it hit the floor. “Besides, at least that way I’d know you weren’t causing trouble for some other person!”

“Well, that’s that and this is this,” Marisa shrugged, apparently not really caring about whether she’d deployed that particular saying correctly. “Anyways, I could go for some clothes right about now too. Havin’ Reimu stare at me while I eat is scaring away my appetite.”

“You already ate six macarons! If that’s you with no appetite, how many would you have eaten before?!”

“What can I say? Girls have a second stomach for other people’s food, ya know?”

Alice sighed once more, although she couldn’t keep herself from smiling a little.

She wondered if they knew what their bickering looked like from an outside perspective. They probably didn’t. Reimu and Marisa were, in their own special way, a pair of blithering idiots.

She meant that affectionately, of course.

They were loud and they made trouble and they couldn’t seem to build a straightforward relationship to save their lives, and who could blame them? Not for nothing did Alice call Marisa the ‘wild witch’; she had been chased from the Human Village, barely socialised and far from domesticated. Behind the friendliness, there was some level of social stunting there – not necessarily a reluctance to have a relationship that was more than skin deep, but a certain cluelessness about how to create one. Behind the flashy smile and the loud voice, there lay a lonely girl who didn’t know how to properly express her feelings – or such was Alice’s uninformed opinion.

As for Reimu… she was Reimu. Another lonely girl locked away in her shrine, forced to maintain impartiality by the chains of duty. Whether she would get closer to people if she had the liberty, nobody could say; how much of her disinterest was a learned quality remained to be seen.

Neither of them knew what it felt like to be smothered with love. That experience – as priceless as it was uncomfortable – had been denied to them.

Alice, for her part, knew exactly what that felt like. It was why she lived alone in the Forest of Magic, surrounded by dolls that she adored but that could not adore her back. She had grown to crave a certain distance – respectful and amiable, but not close. It was why she was happy to bribe Reimu with sweets instead of cultivating a more personal friendship, and why she talked mostly about work when Marisa came to visit.

This current bickering was exactly why she liked the pair. As long as they kept their attention on each other, they never got closer to her than she intended. She could observe them in comfort, laughing at their follies and occasionally offering a reluctant hand with their troubles. It was satisfying for her. It was enough.

“Well. I do admit that having you sit around half-naked in my kitchen is less than agreeable,” she said at last, cutting into their argument with a smooth voice. “I believe I have some spares of Marisa’s outfit that should do, although I shall have to make a few adjustments for Reimu.”

“You’re expecting me to wear one of her outfits?” Reimu asked, her eyebrow quivering. “No way. Lend me one of yours instead.”

Alice frowned; her swarm of dolls burbled like bees behind her. “I’m afraid that’s not particularly feasible. You and I are mismatched in a few key areas…”

Those, of course, being height, bust, hips and waist. Marisa and Reimu were both built to roughly the same floor plan: compact and adorable, with Marisa being slightly moreso in both areas. Alice, meanwhile, liked to think of herself as tall, stately, and at least moderate in her other attributes – enough so that her clothes would drown Reimu and Maris’a comparatively smaller physiques.

Well, that, and she didn’t want to go mucking around adjusting her own clothes just to bail them out. Dresses didn’t exactly grow on trees, even for a woman with as much skill at clothmaking as she had.

Marisa tugged one of her forelocks; usually she would adjust her hat, but alas. “C’mon, Reimu. Would it really be that embarrasin’ to have matching outfits? It’s gotta be better than hanging around in your vest and undies.”

The miko looked at her as if she was an idiot. “I don’t care about how I look. I care about dying of heatstroke on the way back!”

“It’s fine then, ain’t it? We’ll just grab an ice fairy on our way back. Cirno’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

The macarons had been depleted; with a few deft movements of her fingers, Alice had a doll replace them with a plate of cinnamon whirls, and left to find her needle and thread. Marisa and Reimu would not doubt keep themselves occupied quite happily enough by planning a fairynapping together while she worked. (She felt a little sorry for Cirno, but the ice fairy would probably enjoy the attention).

As she left, her flotilla of dolls followed behind her – all but one, which had disappeared somewhere along the way.

“Thanks a million, Alice. I’ll make sure to pay ya back in my next life.”

Marisa beamed before being casually cuffed on the back of the head by Reimu, who took matters of loans and debts seriously. Besides the scowl on the miko’s face, they looked almost like two peas in a pod: a black-white magician and maiden combo pack. It amused Alice to see how an eastern beauty like Reimu could make even Marisa’s ensembles seem demure.

“Thanks. Drop by the shrine whenever you like,” was Reimu’s contribution. “As long as it’s not too often. One witch hanging around is more than enough trouble.”

“Hey, this one’s not on me. I’m not the one goin’ around pullin’ other people’s clothes off.”

“Oh?” Alice asked, primly. “I can’t imagine you were trying particularly hard to stop her. It’s more than a little bit difficult to pry an unwilling person out of an entire dress with any speed.”

To her credit, Marisa had the wherewithal to pause for a second before answering. “Well, it is pretty hot today.”

After bickering a while longer, the two went on their way. They didn’t look back; why would they? For Reimu and Marisa, this was a mostly normal day in the life. Alice had rendered them a service, and ceased to be relevant. Now their thoughts were on capturing Cirno, and taking vengeance against Kasen. (She didn’t know what they would do with Aunn. Nothing, she hoped; she was rather fond of the komainu, as most people were).

That was all well and good. After all, the Seven Coloured Puppeteer had her own matters to attend to.

She took a moment to check her stock of ingredients, since before Reimu and Marisa came she had pastries and now she had none; satisfied that she need not make a trip to the Human Village quite yet, she retreated to her study with a cup of black tea brewed by her dolls.

She set the cup on her desk, which was a little cluttered at the moment. She tried to keep it orderly, since it was a reading space, but a lot of the little ancilliary things she used for dressmaking – nubs of chalk, pins, a few swatches of cloth – had made their way up there as well. It was just handy to have them nearby when consulting her book of clothing patterns, but really that was no excuse… She sighed to herself quietly.

“Now then,” she murmured. “I suppose I should deal with this... Power Sign: Tripwire.”

A gleaming thread, charged with magical power, glimmered in the air. She seized it, wrapped it around her wrist and thumb, and gave it a violent tug. Nobody ever gave her credit for it since they focused on her long fingers and steady hands, but she had very respectable arm strength. The Goliath Doll was a demanding girl to pilot, after all.

Yanked by the thread, one of the many dolls in Alice’s home came soaring toward her: the nameless doll with the hair ornament from earlier. She took a stern look at its face, particularly its eyes, which were not as lifeless and beady as she expected from the dolls she made.

“Come now. Did you actually think you could sneak a doll into a puppeteer’s domain and not have me notice?” she asked. “I was planning on just observing you a while longer, but then that girl picked you out.”

She daubed a magic circle on the chest of the doll with dressmaker’s chalk, quickly and precisely; immediately, it went limp as though its strings had been cut. Strings that didn’t belong to Alice.

If Marisa or Reimu had better memories – or actually paid any attention to the people around them – they might have realised that the doll looked very familiar. A dead ringer, in fact, for Alice in her youth.

“Marisa wanted to call this the Hokkai Doll, didn’t she? But that’s a terrible name. This doll… should be called the Makai Doll instead,” she said, and gave the doll a sharp flick on the forehead. “Isn’t that right… Mother?”

A long silence reigned in the study. And then:

“...Ho ho ho. It seems I’ve been caught.”

Alice pressed a hand to her forehead.

She predicted a very large headache in her future.

Chapter Text

Momiji Inubashiri hesitates just a little before throwing another bit of kindling to the fire.

It isn’t her first time camping on Youkai Mountain. But it’s one of the only ones in recent memory. The mountain has been claimed, now, ‘settled’ by the wise and powerful tengu that loft themselves in its eaves, but it is alive still; like all places of great power in Gensokyo, it breathes. Patrol tengu like Momiji have always been told to bed down in the barracks at night, and trust the wild and rugged landscape to repel intruders by itself.

That’s fine, as far as it goes. But Momiji is seeking strength, not safety. For a youkai, that means tapping into the deepest essence of what they are. What is it to be a white wolf tengu? From what truth has she become estranged?

The history of the tengu is long and complicated. Gensokyo’s tengu have come far from their roots; perhaps they may have forgotten them. The newspaper tengu have busied themselves with reporting on the present day, and are less interested in preserving the history that brought them here… Or so Momiji suspects.

But even if there are no scrolls or stories, a youkai’s gut instinct is a marvellous thing. Momiji’s is telling her that the mountain has the answer, if only she could hear it speak.

For now, she has begun camping and hunting where she can, rather than retreating to the barracks or visiting the tengu’s canteen for her meals. After all, she is a white wolf tengu, not a dog. As much as a certain crow ribs her about it, the two are not the same. A wolf might have a pack, but it does not have a master. It is a wild creature, not a domestic one.

So she is here, in the wilderness, as the night closes in. For company she has the crackle of the campfire, and the shadows that it throws; for shelter she has a lean-to she made herself, hewn from rugged logs and shaped with the edge of her sword.

For food, she has a fish that she snatched from the river and roasted until the skin was crisp and brown. She didn’t bother to de-bone it; for a wolf, bones are simply a way to accentuate the dining experience. If she could be killed by choking on a fish bone, she would have died long ago.

Some would ask: why not boar for dinner? But she isn’t a monomaniac. She enjoys boar, but it isn’t all she thinks about. Anyway, it tastes better with a good beer to go with it. Besides, draining the blood from a boar takes time, and the one she strung up earlier isn’t done yet. Fish for dinner, boar for breakfast. That’s the true mountain lifestyle that Momiji aspires to.

The boar put up a good fight before it died. Perhaps that’s just what comes of using unfamiliar gear. The sword and shield she’s using are not her own, but mass produced stock made for rank and file patrol tengu. Every sword and shield used in the corps starts out that way, and then the wielder makes their own small adjustments, adds some leather to the grip here, paints and emblem there… Momiji’s own arms have been broken, reforged and remade countless times, and she is so used to them that they barely register in her hands.

So she handed them off, and now she has an unfamiliar blade at her side. The small adjustments she made for her comfort are no longer there; it feels strange and foreign in her hands. For the first time in many moons, she has been forced to think as she swings, and question whether the little polished buckler will hold the full force of a charging swine.

It’s a humbling experience, but she believes it’s a necessary one. For the first time, she is realising that it is possible to try your best and yet be complacent at the same time – that effort and application are two quite different things. She has doggedly given her all, whatever her all was at the time, and failed. It is time to think about ways all that effort, all that force, might be applied more efficiently.

As in everything, she finds a mirror in shogi. In shogi, the game does not truly begin with the first move. There are lines of play, known sequences of events that both players with recite – a curious dance that proceeds until the formations are broken and the first divergences from tradition take place. Until those optimal moves have been played out, thought is not what is demanded of the players, but memory: what is the correct response to this or that? What is the end result of this known opening?

But she doesn’t think it should be that way. A novice must think about everything, because they know nothing. A proficient player knows enough that they no longer have to think about small things, and can focus on the bigger picture. But the master has returned to contemplation, fully understanding the weight of every move and motion while retaining their broader viewpoint.

Has Momiji been thinking, really, about her shogi games? Has she been thinking about every turn and twist of her blade? Has she been thinking, properly and earnestly, about how to handle Aya Shameimaru – or has she just been ploughing ahead, defaulting to the same old lines of play?

The answer to those questions is not pleasant to her. But it is there, and it has been there for a long time, waiting for her to open her eyes to it. The mountain does not care if she is prideful or not; the mountain demands strength, and suffers no excuses. If she lacks strength, then the failure is with herself.

She prods the embers a little more, and looks up at the stars. It’s a clear night. A bright moon, too. There’s time and light enough for a little more training before she turns in. She takes up her blade and strips off her jacket, leaving her in just a sarashi and her long skirt. It might get a little chilly, but she has every intention of working up a sweat.

First, the basics: footwork. In swordsmanship, everything begins with the feet. Well, perhaps that rule is a little looser in Gensokyo, where the sky is the most common battlefield, but it still stands.

Then the legs, the hips, the core. All vital to a proper swing. People romanticise the hands when it comes to swordsmanship. They seem to believe it’s all in the wrist. But the hands merely deliver the force that the rest of the body generates. A flick of the wrist might direct the power here or there, but a sword swung only with the arms is as useless as an army with only a general.

She goes over each motion time and again, assessing her form and correcting it. She is no longer content not to think about these things, to allow her mistakes and her habits to fester. She considers them, holds them up to the firelight and finds them wanting.

Slowly, she shrives off the unnecessary motions and emphasises the effective ones. She refines, little by little. The stars and the moon are moving; heat rolls off her body and into the cold air of night.

Eventually, she comes to it: a simple slash, refined and executed to the current limit of her abilities. Having found it, the next step is to repeat it, noting every little inconsistency and mistake that she makes.

Then, when she can replicate it reliably, the next order of business is to do it faster, until her hands bleed and her arms tremble, until she can execute it quickly and flawlessly even under duress.

This is just the first slash.

Every single movement she knows – every technique, every maneouevre and gambit and strategem – must be taken apart, examine, and put back together just like this. No doubt the process will yield new wisdom and new improvements along the way, and then those too must be reviewed and incorporated.

This is the long and arduous path to power, and the mountain that Momiji Inubashiri has chosen to climb.

But the world will not stop and wait while she climbs it. She hears the sound of wingbeats, of wind ruffling feathers, and realises she has attracted an unwelcome audience.

“Ooh, if it isn’t my lovely ex-assistant!” Aya Shameimaru crows, as if this is a chance meeting that she hasn’t spent the last few hours roaming the mountain in order to engineer. “Gotta say, thanks for the meal.”

Momiji pauses. She considers her next swing, and keeps her shoulders loose. If she lets her form slip as a result of Aya’s taunting, she’ll never beat her in a real fight. “I don’t remember feeding any stray animals today.”

“Oh? I’ve been enjoying your little lunch deliveries, you know. Although I do wish you wouldn’t throw them that hard,” Aya laughs. “But actually, I was talking about you. All that puppy fat sure slipped off in a hurry, didn’t it?”

Momiji bristles a little by instinct; she feels her tail puff up ever so slightly. But she forces herself back to calm. True, she is topless apart from her sarashi – essentially in her underclothes. But why let herself be bothered by it? Aya has already seen her in the baths, and vice versa.

“There never was any puppy fat. Keep your delusions to yourself,” she bites back.

“Ayaya. You’re so grumpy all the time. But you ought to be careful, you know? Showing off a body like that. If I hadn’t left my camera with Nitori, I’d splash those muscles all over tomorrow’s front page.”

“You wouldn’t get it to the printers in time,” Momiji scoffs, and swings again. A bit too forceful. Not enough finesse. She pauses. “Hey, Shameimaru.”

“Yes, Momiji?”

“Answer me something truthfully for a second.”

“Hey now! I’ll have you know that I’m always your pure and honest Aya Shameimaru. It’s just that sometimes I have the liberty of being more pure and honest than others.”

Momiji ignores her. Or, rather, she gives just a small huff – a little acknowledgement that a joke has been made but that she has elected not to laugh at it.

“When you say things like that… Is it just to piss me off? Or do you actually believe it?”

A slow smile spreads across Aya’s face, lit up by the glow of the campfire.

“Oho. That’s a meaty little question, Momiji. Is this what it feels like for the interviewer to become the interviewee?” She flaps her wings once, a little sign that her joking is over. “If I answer that question completely truthfully, Momiji, what do I get in return? Do I get to drag a truthful answer out of you?”

Momiji clears her throat uncomfortably. “I’m not a liar.”

“I agree that you’re not a liar. But you’re not very honest, either. Your words and your actions always seem to tell different stories, Momiji. And I think actions can speak louder than words, but words are my stock-in-trade, so I want to hear you say things properly from time to time.” The crow grins. “Of course, you don’t have to. But if you won’t give me a straight answer, I won’t give one back. I’ll just sit back and enjoy your little exercise routine.”

Momiji pauses, and considers.

To be honest, right now, Aya is getting under her skin. She hates false praise, or being lauded for things that are simply in the course of duty. And the way the crow is talking about her like they’re old friends, like she has some deep insight into Momiji’s personality and she’s worked everything out, is a little galling.

Normally, this would be around the time where she’d grow indignant, start shouting, or even throw her first punch… but is that really the right move?

She needs to look beyond habit. To examine the timeworn strategies she’s used in the past, and throw out the parts that don’t work. To step back and see the board from a different angle.

A question for a question. An exchange of pieces. Is that really so bad? No exchange is ever truly equal; the value of material does not mean the positions also have the same value. But a single losing trade doesn’t define the outcome of a game.

“What’s your question?” she asks at last.

“Oh, we’re actually doing it?” Aya asks, raising an eyebrow. “Alright, Momiji. My question is this: why are you so obsessed with beating me in a fight, or making me beat you in shogi? I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from your mouth.”

Momiji grimaces. It is some time before she speaks again; the crackling of the campfire keeps the peace between them.

“...As for shogi,” she says, deciding to tackle the easier part first, “it’s… mm. I enjoy shogi.”

“Well, I figured out that much.”

“I enjoy shogi,” she repeats, slowly. “It makes it… easier. To speak. There are… things that it’s easier to say over a shogi board.”

Aya’s eyes glint in the darkness. Her smile is wider, now, and warmer. “So. If I were to summarize… the reason you’re making me practice and play all these games to try and beat you is because you’re trying to talk to me, and shogi helps you do that. Is that it?”

Momiji says nothing, and swings her sword once again.

“Alright. And the other part? Why are you so obsessed with beating me?”

“That seems like a second question.”

“It seems like the first question, and you just answered the second one,” Aya retorts, a little acerbically. An interviewer like her won’t allow herself to get diverted from the topic so easily. “If you want me to answer a second question, I will. But I want the answer to this one, Momiji.”

Another long pauses. Enough for three contemplative swings of the sword.

“...I already told you. I have a grudge against you.”

“You sure have a talent for stating the obvious, don’t you?”

“What I’m saying is… I can’t quite let it go. Not until I’ve scored at least one good win.”

“And you think that if you do win, you’ll be able to?”

“...I think so. Yes.”

This time, it is Aya who takes her time to think.

“So. To sum all that up… You play shogi because you want to communicate with me. And you’re trying to fight me so you can finally bury the hatchet. In other words… What I’m witnessing here is Momiji Inubashiri trying her best to get along with me. Am I right?”

“That’s three questions,” Momiji retorts. “...You can think whatever you want.”

“I usually do!”

Aya sits back, spreading her legs out by the campfire, beaming. Like she’s having all the fun in the world. Momiji snorts. She can’t help but feel a bit jealous that Aya’s enjoying a moment she personally feels is very tense. Maybe that’s the difference between a great youkai like Aya and small fry patrol tengu like her.

“So, it’s both,” Aya says suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“The question you asked before. It’s both.” The crow leans forward eagerly, as if discussing plans with a friend over dinner. “I do stuff like calling you cute because it pisses you off, and I think it’s funny when you react to it. But, I also do it because I genuinely think you’re cute.”

Momiji scowls. “I figured it would be something like that.”

“Yeah? But you’re weird, Momiji. When I say you’re cute, you always seem to take it as an insult, but I don’t mean it like that. My day job means I’m always surrounded by big, sneaky, power youkai who aren’t cute at all even when they’re trying to be. So to me, having somebody like you around is really refreshing.”

The wolf’s nose wrinkles. Even if it’s not meant to be an insult, it still feels like one… But she supposes, in the right circumstances, she could consider taking Aya at her word. It really depends on the situation, and how many people might be around to hear it. She certainly couldn’t let Aya get away with calling her cute in front of an audience, of course, but maybe if nobody was around, she could be a little more merciful.

“It’s the same thing when I sat down tonight and complimented your body. I mean, yeah, I did it because I knew it would rattle you, since you can’t take a compliment. But also? Those are some muscles, Momiji. You’ve got tone.” Aya makes a show of fanning herself with her hand. “A lot of people go crazy for that kind of physique.”

“Like you?” Momiji snorts.

“Are you gonna use up your second question on that? I do owe you one.”

“I suppose. Why not? I could use a laugh.”

“Ayaya… Well, if you’re asking about my tastes, I’d have to say I don’t dislike it. I usually go for people who are a bit more, y’know, squeezeable. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to put the shoe on the other foot, you know what I mean? I guess in the end, the thing with muscles is that it’s all about how you use them.”

Contrary to her expectations, Momiji does not, in fact, laugh. Actually, she has absolutely no idea what to say, and she’s just hoping that Aya doesn’t take this as a chance to ask about her own tastes in romantic partners because that is a discussion she doesn’t really know if she’s ready to have with anybody, but especially not with Aya and especially not topless and alone on a secluded mountaintop with nobody around to laugh or judge her about it.

She also has the distinct impression that Aya knows all of this, and is enjoying every minute of it.

“Well, anyway. I got what I wanted, plus a little bit of a show, so I guess I’ll get out of your hair. It’s been fun! But there was a question I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Another one?” Momiji grumbles.

“Say I do eventually beat you in shogi and you become my assistant,” Aya begins, which sounds to Momiji like a leap in logic already. “What are you going to do for a living situation?”

The wolf pauses. “What do you mean?”

“Well, they let you stay in the barracks last time because it was only a temporary appointment and everybody kinda knew it, but… If you get promoted into my assistant for real, they’re not gonna let you sleep with the rest of the patrol tengu, right? They’ll probably expect you to lodge at the office,” Aya goes on. A wicked grin curves across her face. “I guess what I’m saying is… Shall I get us a double bed, or should I just build you a doghouse out front?”

The crow begins to cackle at her own joke, only to be interrupted by a sword whistling through the air about a quarter-inch from her right ear.

Her response is to cackle even harder.

“Whoops,” Momiji says woodenly, a faint growl creeping into her voice. “Must have lost my grip.”

“Ayayaya… I am crying, Momiji! I love your reactions. You’re so funny! First you fly off the handle, and then you sit there and you make an excuse that literally nobody in all of Gensokyo would believe…” She wipes tears from her eyes, and finally stands up. “Okay, okay. I’m satisfied. Good luck with your training, Momiji. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re gonna do with those muscles first-hand. Oh, and say hi to Nitori for me!”

With a single, powerful beat of her wings, she is gone – a soaring black shape lost in the night sky. Not for nothing do they call her the fastest in Gensokyo. In fact, the downdraft from her wings was powerful enough that it almost snuffed out the campfire, and Momiji rushes to nurse it with tinder and wood shavings before it dies completely.

“She’s such a pain,” the wolf grumbles, when the fire is safe and she can retrieve the sword she carelessly tossed. (The nice thing about a loaner blade is that it’s disposable; she never would have thrown her own sword.) “If she keeps this up, I’ll have to beat her twice before I feel anywhere near satisfied.”

It doesn’t quite occur to her that the ‘sneaky, powerful youkai’ Aya complains about are a group that happens to include Aya herself, and that the pure and honest owner of the Bunbunmaru might not be above exploiting her own exquisitely punchable face to keep her prospective employee nice and motivated.

But motivated Momiji definitely is, now more than ever, and she seizes her borrowed sword to squeeze in another few drills beneath the light of the moon.

Training until midnight, boar for breakfast, and a visit to Nitori in the morning – those are the ingredients to a satisfying victory. A victory that seems as far away as the moon in the night sky, but close enough to taste.

For the moment, she devotes herself to growth and contemplation. But it won’t be long before Momiji Inubashiri is ready to make her move.

Chapter Text

Reimu Hakurei was, for once in her life, gainfully employed.

Well, actually, that was a lie. Marisa was gainfully employed, but it was Reimu’s fault and Reimu was pocketing the wages, because more money meant more problems and Reimu was always willing to help a friend.

Together, they were producing love fortunes as part of Aya’s birdbrained scheme to turn her newspaper around. Marisa did the work, Reimu put her name on it, and people bought the paper because the idea of the Hakurei Miko actually giving out love fortunes was funny enough to spend a coin here and there. Aya was happy, Reimu was happy, and Marisa (bizarrely) was happy. Everybody won.

Of course, the plan came with downsides. To begin with, it involved seeing more than the minimum amount of Aya Shameimaru. Reimu had a better relationship with Aya than most, mainly because incidents happened to her often , enough that Aya had no need to embellish or manufacture them, but that didn’t mean she wanted her hanging around doing who knows what on shrine grounds.

The second downside was that Reimu had become compelled, against her will, to actually join the swelling Bunbunmaru readership.

Part of Aya’s reward for the love fortunes was a complimentary copy of the Bunbunmaru, delivered right to Hakurei Shrine every morning. Reimu hadn’t asked for it. Nobody had asked for it. But Aya still delivered it, day after day, and day after day Aunn picked it up from the front porch and obligingly deposited it at Reimu’s feet. She would then sit and stare at Reimu with pleading, puppy-dog eyes until she picked it up and read a page or two. Aunn was a patient girl; she was used to watching over the shrine as a statue, and she didn’t get bored. She would stare until Reimu gave in, and they both knew it.

At least, Reimu thought, Aya’s content was getting better. Well, it wasn’t. She was just getting better people to make it. There was now a serialised story written by the Agatha Chris-Q included once a week, and the miko was completely hooked. On the days where the story was published, Aunn at last got the pat on the head she was angling for before being summarily punted out of the room so Reimu could read in peace.

It was on a non-Chris-Q day that something caught Reimu’s eyes as she made a show of reading for Aunn’s enjoyment.

Wanted: Private Investigator
All applicants please come to the lamprey stand near the Forest of Magic.

Reward: 1 month of free dining at the establishment, plus member discount for 1 year thereafter upon the case’s satisfactory resolution.

People mostly thought of Reimu as a somewhat slow person. And she was, but only in the same way that a freight train is slower than a bullet train. As anybody who has ever been hit by one (a somewhat less exclusive group in Gensokyo than other locales) can tell you, a freight train, sufficiently motivated, can move fast enough for almost anyone’s tastes.

“Aunn, get my shoes. We’re going out,” Reimu commanded, springing to her feet.

“Huh? But doesn’t it say to go to the lamprey stand? I thought that was only open at night.”

“Who cares? It’s obviously Mystia that posted the ad, so we just have to find her. If we wait until tonight, Marisa or Sanae will take it,” Reimu said grimly, dressing at maximum speed. “Aunn, where did I put my sleeves? I can’t find my sleeves.”

“Oh, I washed them for you after you spilled sake on them the other night. They should be out to dry right now.”

“Tch. We’ll have to leave them,” the miko hissed. She did make time to pet Aunn’s head for helping with the chores, however. She wasn’t a monster. “Come on. There’s a month’s worth of free food on the line. We need to hurry.”

“Do I have to go? Shouldn’t I stay home and guard the shrine?”

Reimu narrowed her eyes. On one hand, what was a detective – or private investigator, same difference – without a crime-solving pooch by her side? But on the other, she had more freedom of movement if she worked alone. Aunn was a sweet girl, and was mostly opposed to violence unless that person deserved it. Reimu was also a sweet girl, in her own fashion, but she was happy to employ violence as long as somebody deserved it, somewhere. She lived by the maxim that what goes around comes around, and if you happened to be standing in the way when it did, that was your own damn problem.

“Fine,” she agreed. “Be a good girl and watch the house. If Marisa comes, tell her Kasen abducted me for some training or something.”

It was early morning. The birds were still singing, the dew was still glistening on the leaves, and the Hakurei Miko was on the move.

That was how Mystia Lorelai, small business owner and part-time musician, became the subject of a terrifying smash-and-grab raid in broad daylight. Her front door was smashed, Mystia’s collar was grabbed, and then she was shaken back and forth by an angry miko, who, with bloodshot eyes, demanded: “What’s your problem, huh? Spit it out. I don’t have all day.”

Mystia did what any sane youkai in her position would have done, and immediately wet herself.

Half an hour later, when clothes had been changed, tea had been served and sanity restored, the night sparrow finally felt brave enough to take charge of the conversation. “So, um, Miss Reimu. You came about the private investigator ad I put out?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Reimu asked archly, sipping her tea. “So quit stalling. What’s your problem? I’ll investigate it until it stops moving.”

“I don’t want her to stop moving! I wanted an investigation, not a hit job!”

“So it’s a she, then,” the miko said loftily. “See? I’m already investigating. I learned that trick from an Agatha Chris-Q novel. I’m perfect for the job.”

“Ahaha… Miss Reimu, you really just do what you want, don’t you… I don’t suppose there’s any way I could get you to not take the job? I’m kind of scared of what you might do.”

“You could just give me the reward right away,” Reimu suggested. “Actually, that would be great. I think that’s the ideal solution to whatever the heck your problem is.”

“So you burst into my house, and then tell me to give you a month’s worth of free food for doing nothing? This is extortion! I’m going to complain! I’ll write a song about you!”

“Have you ever been to Eientei?” the miko asked suddenly.

“No, although I do occasionally buy charcoal from that lady who lives in the Bamboo Forest. Why?”

“Last time I went, Kaguya told me a really interesting story.”

“Um, who?”

“It’s called ‘The Tongue-cut Sparrow.’”

“Um?!?!”

This, in Gensokyo, was what passed for diplomacy.

Having established to both their satisfaction that Reimu wanted a month’s worth of free food and had no intention of going anywhere until she got it, Mystia decided that she might as well get something out of the trade, and began to elaborate on her problem.

“The issue is with one of my employees,” she said. “I think she’s been cheating on me with another workplace.”

“Well, you’ve only got one employee, so you’re talking about Kyouko, right? You think she’s moonlighting?”

“Yeah, moonlighting! That’s the word!”

“Heh,” Reimu said, lifting her chin and fixing Mystia with a smug expression. “I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that she is.”

“R-really? So fast?!”

“Yeah. Her real job is that she’s a Buddhist priest in training, and you’re the place she’s moonlighting at!”

Mystia fought the urge to say that ‘priest-in-training’ was not a real job. It wasn’t, in her opinion, but saying that in front of a miko who was known to have violent tendencies did not seem like the smartest decision for her continued health.

“You don’t get it. I know about the temple. I think there’s a secret third place she’s working. She’s triple timing me!”

Reimu’s face settled into the default look of a miko who was finding her job more annoying than anticipated. “What makes you think that?”

“Sometimes… Sometimes, when she comes to work… She comes to work smelling like another woman!” Mystia cried.

Reimu, as a calm and compassionate adult seeing another woman in distress, immediately bonked her on the head.

“Why don’t you just quit sniffing your employees? What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Besides, it’s weird.”

“But I do know and it is hurting me! And I can’t help it! When we have concerts, we have to get close since the stage isn’t that big, and it’s cold so we have to share body heat under the night sky! You’re just jealous!”

“I’m not jealous at all. My body heat is for me. Nobody else can have it without my permission.” And, obviously, Marisa’s body heat was hers as well, as payment for tolerating the witch’s shenanigans. “Look, calm down. Maybe it’s someone from the temple. You don’t think there’s women there?”

“There are, but they don’t smoosh themselves up against her! It’s gotta be somebody else!”

“So, what do you want me to do about it? Track them down and make them disappear?”

“No!” the night sparrow squawked.

This was a problem, because tracking down people and beating them up was kind of Reimu’s skillset. Her entire skillset. Yes, she had a number of miscellaneous skills, like befriending animals and polishing off an entire bottle of sake in ten minutes or less, but she didn’t consider those marketable. Imprecisely targeted violence was her wheelhouse, and she wasn’t sure what to do when asked to step outside it.

“I just want you to… maybe, y’know, tail Kyouko for a bit and figure out who she’s meeting, and make sure they’re not doing any employer-unfriendly activities.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” Mystia began, before looking to the side and pressing the tips of her fingers together bashfully. “Um… you know. Like… complaining about me! O-or, smooching on company time! If her other workplaces let her get away with that kind of thing, she’ll want to do it at the lamprey stand, and we can’t have that, right? Right?!”

Reimu did not particularly see why this would be a problem. It was Mystia’s lamprey stand, after all; if she said kissing was allowed, who had the right to tell her otherwise? She made the rules, and if the customers wanted to eat, they had to put up with it. (Needless to say, the Hakurei Miko was not destined for a glittering career in customer service).

Besides, wasn’t Mystia’s ability literally the ability to make people night-blind, at a stall that only operated at night? If you wanted to hide the fact that you were kissing on the clock, just blind everyone for twenty seconds and go to town.

As salient as these points were, they went unspoken. While she found the way the night-sparrow was acting suspicious (in various different directions), Reimu didn’t really care about the finer details of… well, pretty much anything, but definitely not what Mystia was talking about. She cared about free food, and extracting it with the minimum of effort; she would forget this whole incident had even happened to her by next week. That, by far, was her most positive attribute as a private investigator.

“Alright, alright. I get it. I’ll take the case!” Reimu declared.

Mystia furrowed her brow. “Um, I know? I think we established that already. You literally wouldn’t let me not give you the case.”

“Yeah, but now I’ve said I’m taking it. So you’re not allowed to give the details to anybody else. Especially not Marisa. She always tries to get a head start on me when there’s something going on, and there’s no way I’m letting her get away with stealing my reward this time,” Reimu huffed.

“Why not? She always buys you something whenever you two come to the stand, so she’d probably share her free food with you as well.”

“That’s exactly why! I’m gonna turn the tables on her. We’ll be drinking together and then I’ll say, ‘Oh, Marisa, you can try something off my plate if you like.’ She always does that to me, so just this once, I’m going to teach her what it feels like when the shoe’s on the other foot!” Reimu fumed. “And Sanae, too! I’m going to stuff her full of unagi and ruin her stupid diet. Just because you’re worried about your waistline, it’s not an excuse to not come drinking with me!”

Mystia thought it was actually quite sweet of Reimu’s friends (Marisa and Sanae were not the only culprits, simply the biggest ones) to buy food for her, but apparently Reimu was angry about it? But she seemed happy, too? Happy? Angry? Hangry? A maiden’s heart was complicated indeed.

With a little more hammering out the details and very little fanfare, the discussion was concluded, with neither party ever quite being on the same page as the other. Nothing could be done about it; the Hakurei freight train was already getting up to speed, and stopping her once she’d started was too great a task for one measly night sparrow. All she could do was watch the ensuing carnage.

“I really hope she doesn’t do anything to harass Kyouko…” Mystia sighed to herself, cleaning up the tea set. She had more laundry to do as well, after the sudden home invasion… It had already been a horrible day. “...Wait. Did I forget to tell her that she shouldn’t let Kyouko know she’s following her? T… there’s no way, right? She should be able to work out that much by herself… surely…”

But it was, of course, too late.

A red and white blur was already speeding across the skies of Gensokyo, bound for Myouren Temple. And it would take more than Buddha to help anybody who happened to get in her way.

Chapter Text

It was said, in the outside world, that one’s home was also their castle: a place of safety and richness, one that repelled intruders and in which one’s authority was unquestioned.

It seemed a strange metaphor, to be honest. After all, there were many people in the outside world, and a great many of them had homes; the value of castles, conversely, was that not everybody had them. More specifically, that your side had them and the other side didn’t. A castle allowed you to safely station troops in an area, either as a way to defend territory or as a springboard for an offensive push, but the same thing went for the enemy if they happened to seize it. Castles were thus a strategic strength and a liability in the same breath.

But that kind of thinking was for humans.

If a human’s home was their castle, then a witch’s was a fortress: impregnable, defensible, hostile to invaders both inside and out. It was well known that a witch who had time to prepare herself was among the deadliest forces in Gensokyo, and to fight one at her home was to fight one who had free and ready access to every spell, every reagent, and every ward she had in her arsenal. Witches hoarded knowledge, and knowledge was power; only a fool would pick a fight with a dragon at its trove.

To invade a witch’s domain, in other words, was not a decision to be taken lightly if you had any common sense to speak of.

“Well then,” Alice said curtly, taking up a hammer and a box of tacks. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The doll in front of her was motionless – but even so, it was an object of wonder. The craftsmanship was, at first glance, nothing special. At first glance. Under a better light and a more appraising eye, the work was beyond artisanal; a pall of low-level illusions disguised it, but the contours, the textures, the vibrancy of complexion – these were all beyond the ken of any ordinary dollmaker, and beyond the reach of simple cloth and porcelain.

It was a doll, but it was more than a doll. It was exactly a doll, the raw, platonic and true concept of a doll. To compare any other doll to this one was to compare a two-dimensional drawing to a sculpture; there was simply another dimension to it, something further beyond what other baser imitations could grasp. It had no flaws, defects, or imperfections; it could not have been crafted by mortal hands. Such perfection was the domain of gods.

Well, not gods. One god, in particular, with a penchant for creation. A god who had likely absent-mindedly ‘slapped it together’ without thinking particularly hard about it, and hadn’t realised she’d made something so perfect that it spat in the face of honest artisans everywhere.

Shinki, the god of Makai, whose hand had wrought that realm and who was the ultimate genesis of everything in it. Also, Alice Margatroid’s adoptive mother.

“You don’t make it seem like a pleasure, Alice dear,” the doll said. Said? No. It merely produced sounds; its lips did not move. Shinki was a creator goddess, and not a puppeteer; such fine manipulation was likely too troublesome for her.

“Because it’s quite an unexpected visit,” Alice hissed with a false smile. “As I recall, I specifically forbade you from following me to Gensokyo, did I not?”

“You did. And so, I haven’t. Right now, I’m curled up in an armchair in Makai. You know, that red one with the tall back that you always liked.”

Alice did know the one. She had spent many a long, pleasant day reading in it, with a tray of tea and snacks thoughtfully provided by Yumeko, the maid of the household. She remembered wishing dearly that she could take it with her when she had left Makai… but she had already taken her first steps toward the path of a magician, one which would have her throw off her attachments to food, sleep, and age. Her attachment to comfy reading chairs was one more noble sacrifice to that all-consuming goal.

She shook her head; she would not allow herself to be distracted.

“Obeying the letter of the law while disregarding its spirit is the domain of charlatans,” she said witheringly.

She took out a tack from the box, held the sharp tip to the joint of the doll’s right shoulder, and raised her hammer.

“Alice, dear, I don’t think you should do that,” the doll said in her mother’s voice.

“Neither do I,” she admitted, and drove in the nail.

She hissed as pain bloomed in her own shoulder. As expected. The doll had been crafted in Alice’s image, by a literal creator god; even without a piece of her original hair to act as a conduit, there was something of Alice in it. The law of reciprocity bound them, just as with the straw effigies she occasionally nailed to trees in the forest.

In fact, it was a far stronger effect than those. She made those wrought those dolls from straw, featureless and inhuman. The deliberate dissimilarity mitigated the effect. The Makai Doll was much closer to her image, and she felt the pain blossom wonderfully. A patch of red had begun to stain her shawl under the ‘wound’.

But, she noted clinically, the injury was not one-to-one. She could still move her arm freely; under full reciprocity, it would be pinned in place. Perhaps it was because the doll was patterned after her as a child, a being that she no longer was. A sign of her own personal growth.

“Dear, you’re bleeding! I told you not to do it,” the doll chided. Its voice, even projected from a doll’s mouth, was full of a mother’s love. “I’ll come over with some bandages right this second. Wait just a moment–”

Alice laughed dryly. “If you do, I shall drive the next one through the heart.”

The doll said nothing for a moment, which probably meant her mother was pouting over in Makai. “At least dress the wound, darling. You needn’t have done it in the first place! I could have told you what would happen.”

“You could have. And I knew what would happen to begin with,” Alice replied, her voice cool. “But I would still have done it anyway, just to make sure. Knowledge isn’t knowledge until you’ve confirmed it for yourself.”

The doll made a small whine of distress. Despite herself, Alice found her heart wavering.

Alice did not have a poor relationship with her family – yet another sense in which she found herself Marisa’s opposite. She had not been driven from Makai by some calamitous argument, and she had exchanged no scathing words before she departed. Perhaps it would have been better if she had. She was still fond of the family she had left behind, and that was its own problem.

Magic demanded knowledge. Knowledge demanded sacrifice. And Alice demanded magic. That was the core of the issue.

It was said that the pursuit of Buddhism, among youkai, was the pursuit of self-destruction. If so, then the same was true of magic as a human. To chase magic was to commit yourself to long and lonely nights, to imbibing any number of toxic and dangerous compounds, to inevitable accidents and crushing failures. To commit to it fully was to cross over from being human at all: to give up the human foibles of food and sleep, and the simple joys they brought. Even Alice, who had deliberately kept up those habits, found herself rationalising them, trying to view them through logic that cast them as helpful to her studies. In other words, losing her emotional attachment.

No mother would willingly see a child – a delicate, human child – subject themselves to the kinds of things that Alice had done in the name of research. Especially not a god, who had the ability to pluck whatever that child wanted from the ether and happily present it to them.

There was nothing wrong with that. In fact, it was correct. Should a mother not prevent her child from doing dangerous things? Should she not snatch her child’s hand from the fire before it was burned, if she had the ability? Children were precious. Alice, who bathed in their attentions each time she put on her puppet show in the village, subscribed to that belief.

But she wanted magic. She wanted to do for herself the kinds of things her mother could do, under her own power. She was prepared to fight and bleed and slave for it, to give up food and sleep and human mores. Her family, who loved her so dearly, would not have accepted the lengths she had to go through to get her wish.

So she left the warmth of Makai behind her, and set out for Gensokyo where magic ran fast and deep, and forgotten beings whiled away their surfeit of time. There, Alice Margatroid would spread her wings.

“So,” she said to the doll conversationally, “if you don’t mind my asking, which one of them put you up to this?”

As she was talking, she began to strip off her shawl so she could tend her shoulder. She’d confirmed what she wanted to confirm; to sit there bleeding as she chatted would serve no purpose, and merely be a cruelty toward her mother. She tutted as she examined the fabric; it was quite ruined now, and would have to be burned. No witch would leave fabric soaked in her own blood lying around, with the full knowledge of what spells it might be used for.

“Oh, almost everybody in our household has been asking after you,” the doll said. “They miss you, you know. What is a goddess to do? Having heard the pleas of my subjects–”

“Having been handed such a convenient excuse, you mean.”
“Ehehe.” No doubt over in Makai, her mother had just stuck out her tongue and winked, having been caught out in a clumsy lie.

It was an act. It was mostly an act. It was probably mostly an act.

Shinki was powerful and personable; the creatures of Makai looked up to her, as a rule. But they did not rely on her, because she made a point of appearing unreliable. With a friendly yet flaky goddess, her creations would realise they needed to solve (or make) their problems for themselves. Such was her thought process.

She had no particular wish to meddle in the realm she had created. When push came to shove, she would defend it; until that time came, she was content to observe and enjoy what the people of Makai made of their homeland.

In short, she feigned imperfection as a means to grant them autonomy.

Shinki made it look so easy. And that was frustrating, but the more Alice drove at the grindstone of that ambition, the more she respected her mother.

To grant autonomy to a doll was the aim Alice had set for herself. It wasn’t enough for a doll to be automatic, making pre-set actions according to Alice’s will. It wasn’t enough for them to be alive, yet subservient and dependent upon their creator for direction. They had to think, to possess a will of their own and act upon, to have the skill and the motivation to choose their own path in life. To be separate.

The endpoint of Alice’s ambition was a doll that left the house and the warmth that had nurtured them, and made their own path in the world.

Ultimately? It was a play. A performance. A re-enactment, in miniature, of the relationship between a girl and a god. Just as in danmaku, magic must be beautiful, and there was beauty in symmetry. There was beauty in putting on a show. As both a witch and a puppeteer, Alice had her art.

“Well. You’ve been here spying long enough to have formed your opinions. You can tell everybody at home that I am alive and well,” she said. “Is there anything you’d like to say?”

In truth, she had actually discovered Shinki’s doll the instant it had appeared in her home, and deliberately let it be. Had Marisa not noticed it, she would have let her mother observe a little further. Alice could be cold on occasion, but she liked to think herself above being cruel.

“Hmm… Well, as your mother, I do wish you’d wear protective glasses when you’re standing over that cauldron of yours. A lens is much easier to replace than an eye. And you could stand to wear some gloves, too. I saw you burn yourself just the other day. I’m not asking you to stop doing your experiments, but I think you should keep safety in mind.”

Alice pulled a face. “There’s a certain witch living in a mansion over here that I think you should repeat that to.”

“But I’m glad you’re still eating and sleeping right. I always told you that, didn’t I? ‘If you take care of your body, the rest will take care of itself’. I’d glad to see you haven’t forgotten it.”

Alice’s frown deepened further. Was it a skill of Makai’s goddess to strip away all her pretensions, or was that just an ability unique to mothers?

“But most of all, I’m happy to see you’ve made some friends over here.”

“They’re not–” Alice interrupted, before thinking better of it. If she claimed that Marisa and Reimu were not her friends, that would imply that she let all and sundry turn up at her doorstep in their underclothes, which would beg significantly more awkward questions. “Ahem. I didn’t actually meet them here. Actually, we met in Makai. You’ve met both of them before, in fact.”

“I have? I feel like I would remember them.”

“Yes, well. They almost certainly don’t remember you either, but I assure you, you’re acquainted,” Alice sniffed. She rather wished her friends would remember her, but she seemed to have to remind Reimu who she was every other week.

“That’s good. At any rate, I’m glad you’ve got some company other than your dolls. You remember what I always told you, don’t you? It’s fine to be alone sometimes, but–”

“People are a necessary part of being a person. A social beast without society is just a beast.”

“I don’t think I phrased it like that, but you have the right idea.”

Witches hoarded knowledge. Her mother’s wisdom was simply a part of Alice’s ever-growing hoard. Perhaps some parts of that hoard might be more valuable, and perhaps she might accord them pride of place; unlike a certain white-black witch, Alice did not see all treasure as being equal. But those little vagaries were for her alone to know, and never admit.

“You’re a good girl, Alice. I’m very proud of you. I wish you would visit.”

On the other side of that doll, there was no doubt a pouting goddess. Alas, it was much easier to climb into a warm bed than it was to leave one; wrapped in the affections of her family in Makai, Alice felt she might never resurface in Gensokyo again.

“Perhaps I shall, when I have something to show for my research,” she settled for saying.

“Well… I suppose I should leave you to it, then. Do you have any messages for the people back home, perhaps?” her mother asked, a touch hopefully.

Alice paused. She thought deeply.

“One and two-thirds cups of flour, a half cup of sugar. One large egg. A teaspoon of baking powder...” she said, reciting a recipe she’d made for a certain type of eastern-style cookies that Reimu and Marisa enjoyed.

In Makai, the cookies had been closer to the western style. Even now, Alice baked them occasionally to experience the taste of home. But Gensokyo was now a home to her as well, and she wanted to share its tastes with Yumeno and the others.

Knowledge was a privilege. It had to be earned. To share it freely was a mark of great affection from a creature like a witch.

Shinki coughed on the other end of the doll. “Oh, those sound delightful. But is there anything you, ahem, might want to say to me? Your mother?”

“Nothing that you should not already know,” Alice said primly.

“Not even an ‘I love you’?” the voice on the end of the line asked tearfully.

Alice’s voice was terse. “I said, nothing that you should not already know.”

It was just like her mother to see through her on every other level, and yet fail to read between the lines when it would embarrass her. Some things in life were just peculiar to parents, it seemed.

“Well, we love you, dear. You’re welcome to come home any time, even if it’s just a flying visit. We won’t stop you from following your dreams, but we’d at least like to watch over you while you achieve them.”

Alice paused. Frowned. The wound on her shoulder stung; the doll wearing her own childish face looked back at her expressionlessly.

“...Once a month,” she declared flatly. “Once a month, on the day of the full moon.”

“Um, what?”

“I’ll be holding a doll’s council. Or, I suppose, a symposium. Of course, all my dolls will be present, including the one you’re controlling. There will be tea and snacks, and perhaps I will find time to talk about my comings and goings, as a rehearsal for when my dolls achieve sentience and can progress towards autonomy.” She tapped her fingers on the desk. “It shall take place around lunchtime, and end no later than dinner. The moonlight hours are too useful for magic.”

“Oho. And if somebody happened to be watching through the eyes of a doll?”

“Then somebody had better have something worth contributing to the discussion.”

The doll’s face was still impassive. But her mother, Alice thought, was bound to be grinning from ear to ear. It was a goofy, somewhat disarming expression that had never looked quite at home on the face of a creator goddess, but which had nevertheless been one of the high points of Alice’s childhood.

Of course, her mother would probably had nothing to add besides return cookie recipes from Yumeko and random tidbits of household gossip, but that was fine. Knowledge was knowledge. Besides, there were witches in Makai; perhaps her mother would persuade them to share some of their regional techniques. When she put it like that, Alice found she could justify herself quite easily to an imaginary outside observer.

“You’re such a sweet girl, you know,” Shinki said.

“To begin with, I am a fully grown witch. Second, you are imagining things, and third, you are extremely biased.”

“Well, I would be a failure as a mother if I weren’t, hm? But still… are you sure I can’t send you a little care package? Just a few snacks, maybe some clothes? How are you for underwear?”

“I am a seamstress, I fashion clothes of all kinds and all sizes, and I am therefore extremely fine for underwear, Mother.”

“Yes, but dear, I’ve seen your wardrobe, and it’s all very… Gensokyo, you know. I think there’s a place for a dash of Makai fashion, especially if you’re planning on having any romantic encounters in the future. Not that I would encourage that sort of thing and if you do I should rather like to meet them first before things progress that far, but something a little more daring might give you some confidence–”

The Makai Doll abruptly stopped working, which was very strange. Given that it was intended to broadcast and transmit from a witch’s abode – without permission, mind you – it was warded against all sorts of magical tampering.

It was not, apparently, warded against being hit in the head with a hammer in a fit of embarrassment.

Alice awoke several hours later with a ringing headache, a pronounced lump in the middle of her forehead, and a doll whose skull was in significantly rougher shape than her own. She would have to rebuild it before the end of the month when her inaugural doll’s council was due, but she felt quite happy with her decisions, even with the backlash. Sometimes a witch had to do what a witch had to do. Peace of heart and mind was sometimes worth a little pain.

She wobbled to her feet, brushed off her clothes, and readied her dolls. She now had quite a to-do list. Tomorrow, she would begin researching an enchantment to turn off that doll’s mouth with a snap of her fingers. And speaking of people whose mouths she would very much wish to turn off with a snap, she now had to make an urgent visit to Reimu and Marisa at the Hakurei Shrine. Firstly, to take back the clothes she’d lent out before Marisa had a chance to conveniently ‘lose’ them, and secondly, to see if they had successfully captured Cirno. The ethics of kidnapping fairies aside, she could do with an ice pack.

“Shanghai, Hourai. Look after the house while I’m gone. No unexpected visitors,” she called, pulling on a fresh shawl. Her head and shoulder had both begun to throb. “Goodness knows, I don’t think I should survive another one.”

The dolls said nothing. They did not acknowledge her commands. They were moved only by her fingers and her magic, not her words.

But, had Alice not need distracted by the nagging pain in her head and shoulder (and the anticipation of the pain in her neck that was Marisa Kirisame), she might have noticed that the bandages wrapped around her nail wound were conspicuously clean. She might have wondered who might have changed them, and who would even want to.

Autonomy. The ability to act on one’s own will, and make one’s own decisions.

What decisions might a doll make, if it could? Would it speak up, and go out into the world to seek its fortunes? Or would it remain still, and silent, so that it could remain forever with the owner who had given it so much love?

Nothing moved in Alice’s house while she was gone.

And the cursed Hourai Doll, the oldest and the wisest, kept her secrets.

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that could be said for the tengu of Youkai Mountain, it was that each and every one of them had a well-honed nose for trouble.

For the crow tengu and their bountiful ranks of reporters, a sense for momentous happenings was a badge of honour. Being able to guess where news would erupt before it did was just as important as fleetness of foot (or, rather, swiftness of wing); the slow lost the race for the headline, and had to make up for their disadvantage with quality reporting. Obviously, the more popular option was just to be first to the punch.

For the patrol tengu, it was simply part and parcel of their job: identify a problem, and shoot it down. Most could handle the first part, yet few excelled at the latter; the wiliest of wolf tengu had figured out that anybody brave enough to knowingly intrude on the mountain was usually above their pay grade, and the smartest thing to do was call for reinforcements and then be somewhere else for a while.

But all of them knew, in their bones, when something big was about to go down. When something was stirring in the air. And right now, something truly incredible was brewing.

It all began when Momiji Inubashiri, to the surprise of nobody, challenged Aya Shameimaru to a duel.

This, by itself, was not momentous. It was barely even news. In fact, it happened most Fridays, which was when paychecks were dispensed and alcohol imbibed. Momiji was not known to be a big drinker, and what little she drank made her bold.

But usually, Momiji delivered her challenge by way of a sudden, slightly dishonourable haymaker aimed straight at Aya’s smug face, and Aya returned it by hitting Momiji until her insides were very slightly on the outside. It was routine. Some people even found it comforting, although Momiji and anybody whose stall she happened to be drinking at begged to differ.

But this time, Momiji had strode up to Aya – in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, and with her head held high – and presented her with a letter. A formal challenge. She had gone so far as to be polite when she delivered it. She had even bowed before she walked away.

By the time the dinner bell rang, the whole mountain knew: something was deeply wrong. Something very important, or very funny, was about to happen. And everybody wanted to be the first to witness it.

But first, there had to be a round of teasing and gossip, wherein the crow tengu wilfully misinterpreted Momiji’s letter of challenge as a letter of love, and then fanned the flames of the rumours they had deliberately started until two competing narratives had been born.

The first was that Inubashiri and Shameimaru were star-crossed lovers, driven apart by the differences in their caste, and it was only through battle that they could bare their deepest emotions and seek closure for a love that would never be. The second cast Momiji as a brave underdog and Shameimaru as a scoundrel, who had forced her into a duel with Momiji’s chastity on the line. If Momiji won she would walk free, a proud and valiant wolf who had triumphed over a despicable villain, and if she lost, Aya would immediately strip her in front of the baying crowd and ahem ahem, oho oho, etcetera etcetera. Even the bravest and stupidest of tengu knew not to go into any detail past that, because Aya or Momiji would find out eventually, and the more lurid the rumours, the harsher the punishment they would mete out when the time came.

Of course, certain portions of these rumours came from Aya herself, who loudly declared that she would “answer my dear Momiji’s feelings” and that they would “embrace destiny together.” The general consensus was that, since it had been said by Aya, it was entirely false but also quite funny, and therefore worth repeating until it lost all meaning.

That was as far as most of the newspaper tengu considered things. But there were a few among them – precious few, but still – whose talents went beyond a nose for trouble. Who instead had a nose for history, for the moments that defined and twisted an era.

And those tengu were not listening to Aya and her drivel, but instead, they were looking to Momiji. Momiji, whose back was straighter than it had been before, who moved with an elegance she hadn’t possessed half a moon ago. Momiji, who listened to the rumours and dismissed them with barely a blink, letting them pass her by with the calm of a buddha. Momiji, who issued a challenge knowing everybody would hear it, and whose eyes were locked on some long-distant horizon.

Something was going to happen. They felt it in their bones, and not just theirs, but the bones of the mountain. The few tengu who knew what was really going on grabbed their pens, and girded their loins. They weren’t going to miss what came next.

No matter how great the collateral damage.

The day had come, and the air on Youkai Mountain had the feel of a festival to it. Bets were being made and coin was changing hands; it was a day of wagers, of risks taken and rewards reaped. The romantic bet their purse on Momiji. The realistic, on Aya. And the wise? The wise spent their money on beer, because it was the surest way to enhance the spectacle they were about to witness.

Aya Shameimaru sat languidly at one of the stalls, having managed to cajole a free skewer of grilled beef from a vendor who had bet heavily on her victory. She wore a wide smile and her best robes, ones that would look quite at home on any of the mountain ascetics the tengu may or may not have descended from; despite the general state of her house and life, she had managed to keep them blindingly white, and the embroidered crimson leaves that speckled them were still eye-catching and vibrant.

It wasn’t the kind of thing she would ordinarily wear to a fight. The long, floppy sleeves and comically exaggerated single-toothed geta were normally a dealbreaker, used for developing and demonstrating the owner’s dexterity and balance than anything else. If anything, they were the robes of somebody who expected to do little work and go nowhere fast.

But they were her best robes, and today was a momentous occasion. “Besides,” she said to anybody who could bear to be within speaking distance of her, “I’m just being generous and giving my sweet little Momiji a little handicap.”

Unlike Aya, who had arrived well before the appointed time to fan the crowd’s growing excitement, Momiji was neither early nor late; she showed up exactly at the promised time, an emblem of the punctuality that defined her station. She wore the tried and battle-tested uniform of a patrol tengu, much like any other day, and carried the sword and shield that had grown comfortable in her hands over years of service.

But her aura was different. Calmer. More focused. Even the roar of the crowd when she arrived and the sweet scents of sizzling food and mountain-brewed sake could not distract her from what she was about to do. The eyes that had wandered the long-distant horizon were now fixed squarely on Aya Shameimaru.

“Well, here we are,” Aya called. Her voice, likely boosted by the wind, cut through the din; the crowd’s raucous chatter slowed to a murmur. “You got anything to say to me, Momiji?”

A long pause. Momiji Inubashiri seemed to consider it, as if Aya had given her a genuine question as opposed to an invitation for smack talk.

“I think not,” she said at last. “Words are unnecessary. A warrior has other ways to communicate.”

“Words are unnecessary, huh? I feel like that’s a dig at my profession, but whatever.”

Aya finished the last of her skewer, and stood up. Even with her geta, her stride was graceful and confident as she walked to a spot about twelve paces from Momiji – not that twelve paces was any more than a fraction of a second to either of them. She rolled her shoulders, cracked her knuckles, and assumed a fearless grin.

“By the way, Momiji. I’m not actually an idiot, y’know,” she said. More than a few people in the crowd pulled faces of exaggerated surprise; she’d have a word with them later. “I know you’ve got something up your sleeve. Or, should I maybe say, in your sheathe?”

“Oh?” Momiji asked, arching one luxurious eyebrow.

“I’m a journalist, you know? I investigate. There were traces of you all over Nitori’s place. A few days later, you’re sitting there on a mountain training with some sword that isn’t yours. Yesterday, eyewitnesses spotted you leaving Nitori’s place again, and suddenly, you’ve got your sword back. Doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together there,” Aya said loftily.

Hundreds of eyes greedily turned to look at Momiji’s sword, lashed to her waist as always. Had the sheathe always been that long, and the leather that clean? Was it not a little broader than a standard patrol tengu’s sword, a little heavier on her hip? Rumours and theories began to circulate at light speed through the crowd, and more than a few of the whispers were tinged with delight.

A lover’s tiff. A fateful duel. A secret weapon. A spectacle. For the tengu of the mountain, this was high drama at its finest.

“Believe what you like,” Momiji scoffed.

“I usually do. But don’t you think it’s kind of cheap?” the crow asked slyly. “Even if you win, which you won’t, it won’t be because of your own strength. It’ll be because of a sword a sword somebody else made.”

“Isn’t the same true of any soldier, then? A blade by itself is inert. The hand that wields it determines its power. And in any case, community is one of the great strengths of a patrol tengu. Why would I not leverage it?”

“Ayaya. Why not just bring the entire patrol corps, then?”

It was standard pre-fight banter, but it somehow lacked the venom of their usual scuffles. It was less like they were throwing insults, and more like they were debating philosophy over a mug of beer together – although as a philosophical debate, it was as shallow as a hummingbird’s sake cup.

“On the count of three, then?”

“On the count of three.”

They failed to agree who was doing the counting, and so they both began. But by the time they reached ‘three’, their voices had synchronised anyway. With an odd moment of unity, the grudge match of Inubashiri vs Shameimaru began.

Aya’s first move was to take her fan and swing it down at Momiji’s feet. A blast of wind followed it, sweeping across the ground in a whirl of dust and taking the wolf’s feet right out from under her.

Unlike Aya, Momiji was a swordswoman; that made her more dangerous in close quarters, but equally, it forced her to somehow close the distance first. Blowing back her charges would probably do no lasting damage, but it forced her to spend more of her energy sprinting back to the fray – energy she could ill afford to waste against someone as dangerous as Aya.

Swordsmanship also relied on the chain of the body, well-constructed strikes, and the footwork that enabled them. Without balance, there could not be power; deny a swordswoman her feet, and you effectively defanged her. Aerial swordsmanship techniques had been developed for Gensokyo’s specific needs, but there was no question that the weapon was stronger on land than in the sky.

In other words, blowing Momiji off her feet was the obvious strategy. So obvious that nobody stopped to wonder why Aya had never bothered with it before.

Every previous fight between the two had simply been a bareknuckle slugfest, in which Aya’s superior power and speed as a youkai made the overwhelming difference. This time, Aya was not content to win with a quick gut punch and a snarky jibe.

Aya’s objective was not to win. It was to settle things. To that end, she either wanted Momiji to score a surprise victory that she could hold her head up and be proud about – or, alternatively, she could completely crush the white wolf in such a way that she’d give up any ambitions of staging a comeback. Either way, there was no point fighting unless she went full force.

To her surprise, Momiji remained exactly where she was – feet braced against the earth, poised and balanced. She had been expecting the wolf to lunge forward in the brief window of opportunity between each swing of the fan – and, of course, she had a surprise in store if she did. But instead Momiji hunkered down. Watching. Waiting.

Aya felt an involuntary shiver go down her spine.

Perhaps it was true that familiarity bred contempt. She was so used to Momiji simply rushing her down that she hadn’t considered what to do if she didn’t go on the offensive. It felt like they’d gone through a role reversal… But actually, wasn’t it the opposite? Momiji was a patrol tengu. A guardian of the mountain. It only made sense for her to take up a defensive position.

Even as she thought about it, Aya felt the need to scoff at herself. She’d somehow been successfully wrong-footed by a woman doing literally nothing. All the wolf had done – all she continued to do – was look at her. Not glaring, not even quite staring. Just… focusing. Taking her in. As if seeing her for the first time.

Most importantly, Momiji’s sword was still in its sheath.

“Ayaya… Are you really sure you want to let me set the pace, Momiji?” she taunted. “You only have yourself to blame if you can’t keep up.”

The wolf didn’t even blink. Didn’t even frown. Just squared her shoulders in anticipation of the assault.

Aya struck.

It was a motion that took less than the blink of an eye – fitting for a woman with the title of Gensokyo’s fastest. With one sweep of her wings, she charged across the clearing with her feet only an inch from the ground – before scything abruptly around to attack from the side. As she did, she dug the long single tooth of her geta through the dirt to throw up a cloud of dust. How exactly Momiji’s vision worked was known only to her; it was entirely possible that an improvised smokescreen like this one would have no effect. But if there was even a one in twenty chance it would work, it was worth doing.

Under the cover of dust, Aya Shameimaru lunged forward with a right hook that could split the cloudbanks in two.

It was a good punch. Surprisingly good, actually. Most people did not think of crow tengu as being physically imposing, and perhaps the little fledgelings flitting around the mountain weren’t. But Aya was an old hand. She knew her business. She remembered how it was to work under the oni. She remembered getting piss-drunk under the stars and throwing hands with superiors that could bury her in one blow. She wasn’t a deva of the mountain but they had taught her how to brawl, and what the oni taught, your body remembered. Her habit of folding Momiji in half with a single body blow was not a fluke. It was a practised art.

Momiji, entirely unfazed, caught the punch with her shield and let it roll harmlessly off, using the curve of the shield to disperse the force. She smacked Aya’s chin with a stiff jab in retaliation, and stepped sharply backwards to resume her defensive posture. Her eyes remained trained on her opponent.

The pace of the fight had been set. Aya rushed in with flurries of hard, withering blows; Momiji calmly disassembled the assault and gave her a light smack for the trouble, before backing off again. To the untrained eye, it seemed almost like an even fight. To a very untrained eye, it might have even appeared that Momiji, who was carefully getting in one strike every time Aya came forward, was winning.

But anybody who had held a shield in their life knew what was really happening. They were imagining the deep bone ache in Momiji’s shield arm as she deflected the punishing blows of a greater youkai. That pain wore on you. It made you slow. It forced mistakes.

Exactitude was the onus of the defender. If Momiji failed to defend just once, she would fall, and with each time she succeeded, her limited reserves of focus, stamina, and the sheer durability of her body were being used up. Defending then countering was not a poor strategy, but it only worked with a strong reprisal. The little jabs Momiji was throwing might have been enough to halt Aya’s momentum, but they weren’t doing any real damage or advancing the fight in the patrol tengu’s favour.

More than one person in the crowd had already mentally called the fight in Aya’s favour – and why not? She was the favourite to win, after all.

But Momiji’s sword was still in its sheath.

That was the wild card. Until it had been used, Momiji couldn’t be counted out. She knew it. Aya knew it. The crowd knew it. Aya was waging a battle of attrition, but Momiji was calmly waiting for the right opportunity, needling her opponent with small, almost disrespectful blows. Baiting her to commit just a little more, to throw herself into the fray with just a bit more abandon.

It was a trap, laid out as clearly as if Momiji had simply arranged the pieces on a shogi board. Not even Aya, busy throwing frantic blows that would shake the mountains if they landed, could fail to recognise that.

But they weren’t playing shogi, and the pieces weren’t equal. Nitori was correct in at least one thing: Aya was a greater youkai, and she could blow through a trap with pure force alone.

Having reached the limits of her patience, Aya sped up. Hummingbirds would have been jealous of the speed of her wingbeats, but no hummingbird had ever been born with this much violence on its mind. She closed with Momiji faster than ever before – too fast for the wolf to assume that solid defensive posture that had thwarted so many strikes.

Finally, Momiji’s hand landed on her hilt.

Did she mean to finish the battle in one iaijutsu stroke now that Aya had closed the distance? Or would she brace the blade into the core of her body and try to impale the charge like gutting a boar with a spear? They were both possibilities that Aya Shameimaru was ready for. She was confident, entirely confident, that Momiji didn’t have the draw speed to hit her in flight, and nor would she blunder onto the tip of an exposed blade. The only unknown factor was whatever trap Nitori had hidden in the sword.

Aya respected Nitori; her camera was a work of art. But she didn’t think she’d lose to a retiring kappa, no matter what the circumstances.

As she reeled back to strike, Momiji whipped up the sword, sheath and all, to block the strike with the flat.

It was an odd move. There were much better ways to block a strike, and most of them involved the shield on her other arm. Her stance wasn’t solid, either. As soon as she did it, Aya knew something was wrong.

But the wolf had watched. She had waited. And she had timed her move perfectly, in the brief window of time between Aya committing to a strike and following through.

Aya struck the blade, and winced as she heard it crack and splinter under her fist.

It was wood. The whole thing. Sheath and all.

The reporter tengu had a moment to feel a flash of indignation. When she was being serious, why was Momiji bringing wooden swords to a real duel?

But then the trick hit her. When Aya struck, she had been expecting to meet bone or metal. She had been expecting to be stopped. The wood had no such resistance. The force had nowhere to dissipate, and she was carried forward by her own momentum – a sudden and expected overcommitment.

Momiji dropped the remains of her sword, barrelled forward, and struck Aya with an uppercut that left her seeing stars.

She followed it with a backhand blow with her shield, caught her with the trailing hand, and smashed a bone-crushing straight into her nose. Aya, scrambling to correct her footwork and failing, finally beat her wings as hard as she could to create distance and recover. The few moments she spent dazed had been ruinous, but the situation wasn’t unsalvageable. The fight could still be won.

“Not yet!” Momiji snarled.

The wolf brought her shield close to her chest – and as she did, Aya’s sharp eyes caught the gleam of metal behind it. Not the painted, dull metal of a patrol shield, but something shining, polished. Kappa-made.

For the first time, the thrill of genuine danger shot through Aya’s nerves.

There was a soft click, and gouts of fire exploded from Momiji’s shield. In an instant, she accelerated to her top flying speed, and then far beyond it: a short-range, headlong dash powered by the so-called ‘thrusters’ that Nitori had installed. There were no safety mechanisms, no steering. They were all entrusted to the body that Momiji had honed beneath the moon.

That same body was bathed in flame as she barrelled toward Aya – at such a speed that even a crow tengu would be hard pressed to dodge. But ‘Gensokyo’s Fastest’ had the reaction speed to match, and had already begun her countermeasures.

In only an instant, Aya Shameimaru seized her fan and launched an attack. With a single sweep, she created a round tunnel of howling air – and a vacuum of pressure inside it, centred on the oncoming wolf.

It wasn’t danmaku, or a spellcard; it didn’t have the playful beauty that the spellcard system espoused. It was the serious attack of a greater youkai versus a dangerous, made with the intent to maim or kill. That was the attack that Aya chose in the heat of the moment – the one thousands of years of fighting experience had brought to her fingertips.

The howling winds that made up the outside of the tunnel shredded any part of Momiji’s body that brushed against them. The intense pressure of the centre threatened to crush her bones themselves. The front of her shield crumpled and warped as she held it in front of her – but the engine that Nitori made refused to die, and the wolf refused to halt her charge. She was battered, shredded, actively ablaze, and still coming.

There was nothing that the crow tengu could do now to stop it. The only option left for Aya Shameimaru was to grit her teeth.

The blow, when it came, was monumental: a full-force, straight punch with all the power and momentum that Momiji and her thrusters could bring to bear. The white wolf howled as she threw it, as much from pain as the excitement of battle.

There was a resounding crack as her fist hit Aya’s chin. The crow tengu was knocked straight off her feet, flew a little way through the air, and thumped to the ground – pure dead weight. A second passed. Two seconds. Five. Ten.

The duel was over. The crowd erupted. Aya Shameimaru was out for the count, and Momiji Inubashiri – a patrol tengu of little renown – stood, victorious, over her defeated opponent.

She stood victorious for approximately fifteen seconds longer before slumping to the ground, horribly burned on the side of her body that held the shield and bleeding from all sorts of unmentionable places besides. Youkai rushed – well, staggered, since there had been a lot of alcohol flying around in the stands – to give her medical attention.

The long grudge match had finally been settled in Momiji’s favour. But it seemed the price to be paid for her victory was steep indeed.

Chapter Text

“Ayayaya. What a mess. You have no idea how much trouble you caused me, Momiji.”

Momiji did not respond. She had a fine view of the ceiling, and didn’t want to spoil it by turning her head to look at Aya’s face, which, seven days after their duel, had a very sizeable bruise but no lasting damage.

Momiji, on the other hand, was still very emphatically confined to an infirmary bed, with burns down one side of her body, lacerations all over, and internal organs that were all in some level of distress. It was difficult to be smug about her victory when it had left her in such a state. The attack Aya had hit her with really had been something special; apparently, a human might have popped like a grape from the pressure alone, and it was only by having the robust body of a youkai that Momiji had survived with no (long-)lasting injuries.

Incidentally, Aya had gotten back up within a few minutes of being knocked unconscious. She didn’t even have the good grace to be concussed. She’d made sure to rub that in Momiji’s face, of course.

“They’re all making a huge deal out of it, just because I hit the ground before you did,” Aya groused. Momiji was very pointedly ignoring her, but Aya was content to ignore her ignoring. “They’re hyping you up as some kind of legend, y’know. They’re giving you titles and everything. All they want to talk about is ‘Momiji, the Blazing Autumn Leaf!’, or ‘Inubashiri, the Storm-Crushing Fang!’. And they all want interviews with me, even though all I did was get socked in the jaw. They don’t even know how to interview!”

The reporter huffed, and crossed her legs. She seemed to do a lot of that whenever she came to visit. The position of the chair meant her legs were just in Momiji’s peripheral vision, so all she saw from Aya’s visits were a pair of legs being thrown around willy-nilly. She supposed they weren’t bad legs, as far as legs went, but not good enough to be swinging them around so carelessly.

“Did you give my thanks to Nitori?” Momiji asked during the lull in the complaining.

“Yes, I gave your thanks to Nitori. She’s mad as hell, you know. She’s mad at you for almost killing yourself with her invention, and she’s mad at me for almost killing you while you were ‘testing it for her’. She says she’s going to jack up what she charges for my camera maintenance!”

“Good,” Momiji scoffed. “She deserves it.”

“Ayaya… I can’t argue with you there, but have a heart. A bird’s gotta eat, you know?”

“The Bunbunmaru is doing better than it was before, so you can afford it. And you’d save money if you’d cook for yourself instead of going to the foods stands every night.”

“Going to the food stands is a business expense! I canvass for leads while I’m eating. What rumours am I supposed to overhear in my own house?”

Momiji huffed. It was at this point she deeply regretted not being able to roll over onto her side, so she could put her back to Aya and her nattering. The first day Aya visited (barging into the infirmary and threatening unspeakable violence against any patrol tengu who tried to stop her), she had mostly been enquiring about Momiji’s condition with what seemed to be genuine concern. Now her visits had developed into a litany of complaining, some of which were repeats.

“Anyway, I’ve got plenty of food. Fruit, specifically. People keep giving me baskets of the stuff, to give to you. Don’t you think that’s harassment? Making the loser of the fight give get-well hampers to the winner?” Aya asked sourly.

“Well, one of us is hospitalised and the other isn’t,” Momiji pointed out.

“That’s what I mean. Really makes you wonder who the winner actually was, doesn’t it?”

Momiji scoffed, but made no particular retort. After all, she’d had the same thought herself. Hard not to, given the circumstances – and the way that Aya took care to flaunt her lack of serious injury.

“Ayaya. I suppose what I’m saying is: You want a pear?”

“Not enough to let you feed me one.”

“You’re no fun, you know that?”

“I imagine that’s a common trait among hospital patients.”

Aya had no response to that, proving that although she had been confined to the infirmary, Momiji’s well of good fortune had yet to run entirely dry. Or perhaps not; after a carefully measured pause to imply she had been thinking about something (when she had no doubt planned it well in advance), Aya spoke in a quiet voice.

“Hey, Momiji. Mind if we invoke the Truth Clause for a little bit?”

Momiji considered it, which was more than she would have done prior to the whole debacle of becoming Aya’s temporary assistant. “I don’t have any truths I want from you right now.”

“I’ll give you an IOU for future truths in the making. Please?”

The wolf huffed, and considered telling her that an IOU from Aya was worth less than the paper it was written on. But one thing she had begun to learn was that a question often revealed just as much about the enquirer as the one who answered it.

“Fine,” she said.

Aya paused a moment. Composing her thoughts. Carefully weighing her phrasing.

“You beat me.” A bald admission, only really truthful by technicality – but truthful nonetheless. “Are you… you know, satisfied? Enough to maybe bury the hatchet?”

It was a question Momiji had to consider before she answered. A question she had been considering, many times, during her enforced bed rest.

Was she satisfied? Really?

“...I would have liked a more convincing victory. I think I did well. I can feel that I’ve changed. But I feel like I could have gotten stronger than I did. I feel like I still have growing to do,” she said, at last.

“Oh.” Aya’s response was muted. Perhaps a little crestfallen. And, as usual, just a bit too hasty.

“I can’t say I’m fully satisfied. But I’m satisfied enough,” Momiji finished. “I wanted to give you one good hit, and that’s what I did.” She sighed. “Yesterday is yesterday, and today is today. I don’t want to drag yesterday’s news around with me my whole life.”

“So… fresh start?”

Momiji smiled to herself. There was something just a little bit amusing about the hopeful tone in Aya’s voice. “Close enough.”

Aya was probably under the impression that Momiji, confined to the bed as she was, could not see the hapless smile that was spreading on the crow’s face. As it happened, Momiji’s clairvoyant eyes came with some very respectable peripheral vision, too. Since it was a rare occasion where Aya’s grin had only trace amounts of smugness, she decided to hold her tongue on the matter.

“Ayaya. Well, that’s good enough for me. Actually, I got you a get-well present as a token of goodwill. I put a lot of thought into it.”

Momiji chuckled dryly. “How very suspicious.”

“How is it suspicious? We’re still under truth clause right now,” Aya replied tartly. “Here. Take a look.”

Momiji grunted, and made a show of turning her head. On the nightstand, Aya had placed an interesting device – a block of wood, in which two clock dials were set side by side, with a button over each face.

“It’s a timeclock they use for playing certain variants of shogi and shogi-like games in the Outside World,” the crow explained. There was a certain glee in her tone; perhaps she was simply overjoyed to actually use the research and fact-finding skills her journalism demanded for once. “It’s called speed shogi.”

“They made it even faster?” Momiji grimaced. When it came to the Outside World’s adaptations of her favourite game, the wolf was very much not a fan. Shogi was an enjoyable and fulfilling way to spend time, and that was the point. Where was the sense in rushing it, in trying to spend less time on something that existed to whittle time away?

“Hold on. At least let me explain before you start making faces at me. Speed shogi is actually played with the same pieces and moves as regular shogi, but each player has a limited time to make their moves – say, half an hour per game. When you push the button over your side of the clock, it stops your clock and starts the opponent’s, so you can keep track of how much time you’re taking.”

“To what end, though? I don’t begin a game of shogi to try and spend the least possible amount of time playing shogi.”

“Well,” Aya began, and paused. “It kind of trains different skills, I guess? It’s one thing to pick the right move when you have all the time in the world, but another thing to do it under time pressure. And… Well, I was actually thinking it might be good for you and me, in particular.”

Momiji raised her eyebrows, which had thankfully not been singed off by her shield thrusters. “Explain.”

“Right now, there’s no way I could ever challenge you. Given enough time, I think you’d always be able to outplay me. But if there’s time pressure, it’s a bit more even, right? You might make mistakes you wouldn’t otherwise make.”

“And you wouldn’t?” the wolf scoffed.

“Ayaya. I already make plenty of misplays,” Aya shrugged. “One or two more is a drop in the ocean. But if you misplay once or twice more than usual, that’s a huge increase. It’s about proportions. Besides… you already know I’m a pretty busy person, right? Once the paper kicks back into full swing, it’ll have to be quick games or no games at all.”
Momiji folded her arms. That was a lie; she didn’t fold her arms, because she had been told very explicitly not to move them at all for fear of undoing all the hard work of the medical staff. But in a perfect world, she would have folded her arms, so as to better think deeply upon Aya’s words.

Shogi, but for busy people.

She had always been resistant to the idea of rushing shogi. But surely it was better to have a game than to not, even if the game was short. Just because Aya was busy and annoying and really ought to sit in a way that did not expose the contents of her skirt to anybody who happened to be confined to the bed beside her, it didn’t mean she ought to be excluded from the game Momiji loved. There was room enough at the shogi table for a newspaper crow.

The idea that the game would call for different skills also intrigued her. She’d often felt that she’d hit a plateau in her shogi play, much as she had in her combat. With great effort and by trying options she had never bothered to properly examine before, she felt she’d made progress in her fighting; perhaps her shogi play would benefit from the same. In any case, there was nothing to be lost by experimenting.

She hummed to herself, turning things this way and that in her mind. Aya said nothing; she seemed to have realised the value of shutting up when it came to persuading the wolf of anything.

“...I see,” she said at last. “It’s a worthy gift. I’ll accept it.”

“Do I not get a thank you? I thought really hard about it, you know.”

“Isn’t it a get well gift? In that case, I’m treating it as an apology for going overboard and putting me in hospital in the first place.”

“Ayaya… There’s no winning with you. But that’s fine, I suppose.” Aya’s nose wrinkled in amusement. “So, care to try it out? I’ve got a board with me. We can play speed rules, but everything else will be the same as usual.”

Momiji sighed.

It was a trap.

It was a trap, and it was such an obvious trap that it could only have been thought up by a greater youkai who was used to ignoring such concerns. She could see it coming a thousand ri away; anybody could, clairvoyance or not. Hell, Aya seemed to have carefully foreshadowed it for the whole conversation, saying she’d ‘thought hard’ about the whole thing.

However… In some ways, Momiji found she didn’t necessarily dislike that.

Momiji had, begrudgingly, learned something in her time as the crow’s assistant. Aya didn’t call herself ‘pure and honest’ because that was what she was. It was because it was what she wished to be. The world around her didn’t necessarily always play ball, but she was a crow tengu old enough to have rubbed shoulders with the oni. The truth was important to her, and she’d rather win with her own power than relying on tricks.

Stooping to such things was a sign of how badly she wanted something. A sign of respect to a worthy opponent. She might clumsily leave hints to the trap as a result of her desire for honesty, but she was playing the game in earnest, even if it meant acting like a lower-rank youkai.

Well… if Shameimaru had it in her to act like a lower rank youkai to get what she wanted, perhaps Momiji had it in her to act like a higher rank youkai, and blunder happily into the trap, confident in her ability to deal with the aftermath.

“I accept. Speed rules, with the same ruleset otherwise. You can take the first turn,” Momiji declared. She felt an odd sense of peace as she did. Perhaps she had just resigned herself to her fate, but perhaps she had just achieved a serenity she hadn’t had before.

Aya quickly set up her board on the bedside table. There were a few scuffs on the pieces, which Momiji noted with approval. Once, it had been a brand new set, never played with. Now it was getting worn in. A proper set for a proper player.

“And… Start!” Aya clicked the clock, and slid a pawn forward before clicking it again.

It was, of course, a bad move. She’d played one of the outside pawns forward, which had its merits, but those merits were almost certainly out of the reach of a novice like Aya. But it didn’t matter. She’d already won.

“Pawn, 77,” Momiji said, already knowing what the response would be.

“I’m not your maid. Move it yourself.”

The timeclock ticked rhythmically on the table. It was an oddly pleasing sound, and Momiji allowed it to continue uninterrupted for ten or twenty seconds.

“You’re aware that I’d bedbound and cannot move, of course.”

“I’m aware that you strapped a jet engine to your arm and muscled through one of my strongest attacks just to sock me in the jaw. I know exactly what you’ll do when you’re determined. If you really wanted it badly enough, you’d get up and play your move.”

Momiji sighed theatrically. “And when I eventually run out of time, you’ll no doubt demand I become your assistant. Because apart from time rules, we agreed that everything would be the same – which no doubt includes the stakes.”

“That’s exactly right,” Aya replied. “But, uh… No offence, but it kind of takes the fun out of gloating if you act like you figured it out in advance.”

“I did figure it out in advance. Since the moment you brought out that clock.”

“Then why just fall for it, then?”

“Maybe try using your brain instead of asking to be spoon-fed the answer. You’ll have plenty of time to think while that clock ticks down.” She paused. Her tone had become a little acerbic, and she took care to rein it back in. “But, while we’re waiting, I’d like to know. Will you be satisfied? Winning like this?”

“Absolutely,” Aya said. Without missing a beat. As if there was nothing in life she believed more. “Momiji, I’ve seen what you’re capable of. When it comes to you? I’ll take whatever wins I can get.”

Momiji mulled that over. In life and in shogi, there were no correct moves. But there were good moves and bad moves, and what Aya had just said was a good one.

“Of course, if you really can’t stand being my assistant… You could always pay me back with your body.”

And she’d spoiled it. To her credit, the crow had taken great care to say the line with all the overblown bombast of a vaudeville villain – not that Momiji knew the concept. All she saw was some absolutely atrocious acting.

“Pay you back with my body…? That’s just called ‘being employed’, idiot.”

“Ayaya. I meant in the fun way. Think about it. I can just slip beneath the covers with you for a few minutes and boom! This whole thing goes away.”

Momiji scoffed. However crudely it was being presented, Aya was giving her an out. There were no witnesses in this room; no way to know who was doing what to whom. If she said yes, Aya would simply feign some sort of sexual encounter and use it as an excuse to let her go without being her assistant. If she said no? She could claim later that Aya had blackmailed her into being her assistant via sexual coercion, safeguarding her own reputation (a great deal of which had been built around her stalwart defiance of Aya Shameimaru as of late) by tanking the crow’s. In its way, it was a kind gesture, but it also had the terminal levels of stupidity that could only be achieved with centuries of experience.

Or was it? At what point had Momiji started giving Aya the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst of her? That thought bothered her, but the way that Aya was theatrically wiggling her fingers bothered her even more.

“Sexual harassment already? Classy as always, Shameimaru. Some of us actually respect proper courtship, you know.”

“Proper courtship? What, you want all the kissy-kissy stuff as well?” Aya scoffed. “So sorry, but somebody just about dislocated the jaw the other day, and I’ve not really be up to kissing since. Too bad for you, Momiji.”

“Oh, so your mouth’s useless apart from flapping your lips? All the more reason not to want you in my bed. Life’s too short to bother with a pillow princess.”

“How the hell would you know, Momiji? I could write your recent dating history on a grain of rice.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make me out to be some blushing virgin.”

“All I’m saying is that if you hadn’t had a lay in three hundred years, your experience resets to zero.”

“And? It’s not like you’re doing much better. I can’t imagine you’re bringing too many partners back to that sty of yours.”

“I brought you, didn’t I?”

“And I was appalled. You live like an animal. Usually you at least get to know somebody a little before you have to pick their dirty underwear off the bedroom floor.”

“Ayaya, You’ve known me for decades. You just didn’t like me until now.”

“At any rate,” Momiji said, having seen the obvious response to that but deciding it was low-hanging fruit, “since I have no particular intention of suffering you as my bedmate, it is with great regret that I must accept my position as your new assistant. Happy?”

“About time,” Aya said, pouting. “You could have just said that without insulting me first, you know.”

“That is definitely something I could have done,” the wolf agreed.

They let that parting shot ring out over the infirmary for a few seconds while Aya, still seemingly convinced that peripheral vision was a quality that had been withheld from Momiji at birth, allowed herself a brief but victorious pump of her fist. She had scarcely ever looked like more of an idiot; Momiji supposed that seeing Aya regularly make a fool of herself would be one of the perks of her new position.

“Alright then. There’s all sorts of troublesome paperwork I’ll have to do to get it all made official, but here’s my first instruction as your soon-to-be boss: rest up and get healthy, so I can put your nose to the grindstone properly!” the crow declared.

“Yes, yes,” Momiji sniffed. “In the meantime, kindly reset the shogi board. I understand all this speed shogi business was just a barefaced ploy, but I would actually like to play a game of it that goes beyond the first turn. I trust you’ll actually move the pieces for me this time?”

“Ayaya. Whatever else happens, you’re still a complete fanatic. Well, okay. Just one game for now. As a treat. Your employer’s gonna be pretty busy after this, you know.”

“I see. I suppose I’ll aim for a victory in as few moves as possible, then.”

Aya started the clock once more. After a brief flurry of positioning, Momiji began to make good on her promise, cheerfully gouging holes in Aya’s formations at a speed that the crow very soon began to suspect was deliberate. Having to actually move the pieces and set into motion her own defeat was an entire new level of humbling.

“Momiji?”

“Mm?” the wolf half-replied. She was almost certain Aya was scrabbling to distract her, but decided to allow it anyway. She had enough spare brain power to field a question or two.

“So, uh. Patrol tengu care that much about courtship, huh? Tell me a little more about that.”

It was an odd tone of voice. A lot of little things layered together. Professional curiosity. Self-derision. A little bit of hope. That kind of question, Momiji thought, was always the most bothersome. It was the kind of question where people only decided why they’d asked it after they’d already gotten the answer.

“Are you up to date on your deadlines?” she asked, a little sharply.

“Huh? I had a few little wobbles due to all the people asking me about our fight, but–”

Momiji ignored her. “Have you been eating well? Three square meals a day, every day?”

“Every day seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? It’s fine to skip a meal here and there, right?”

“Have you cleaned your damn office?”

To this one Aya pointedly did not even bother to loft an excuse.

“Personally speaking,” the wolf said, sighing, “I respect people who can work diligently, every single day. If you can’t even get your life in order, then it’s a bit early for you to be thinking about courtship. That’s my opinion.”

“Hey.” Aya gave her a gentle, but slightly begrudging nudge with the tip of her foot. “You’re my assistant, y’know. It’s going to be your job to help me get my life in order.”

“I’m aware. I suppose I’ll drag you up to my standards one way or another.”

“Ayaya… I finally got a cute puppy for an assistant, so why do I feel like I’m the one being put on a leash?” Aya groaned.

Momiji frowned. Apparently the serious talking was over. “I’ve told you not to call me that. I hope you realise I’m going to make you regret it later.”

“Oh, I misspoke,” the crow said airily. “When you used to get all huffy and over-react when I teased you? That was cute.”

Momiji rolled her eyes. She wasn’t planning on giving Aya that particular satisfaction any more, if she could help it.

“But right now? The whole self-assured thing you’re going with? That’s a bit more that cute.” Aya flashed her a grin. “Just so you know.”

“Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, hm?” Momiji asked, unamused. Well. A little amused. More amused than she would have been a few weeks ago, in any event.

“Yep. Welcome to journalism, Momiji. I hope you enjoy your stay,” Aya cackled.

There were many things about the world of journalism that Momiji was still undecided on, and which she would no doubt have to learn through pain and effort. Aya, for all her passion for the craft, had not failed to present its more negative aspects to a prospective new assistant – and perhaps that spoke volumes about her true character.

But a stay in the field of journalism was still probably preferable to a stay in hospital. Momiji relaxed, studiously ignored whatever it was that Aya had begun to talk about, and willed her body to recover. The future before her was new and uncertain; as an old wolf who had taught herself so many new tricks, she found she was quite eager to meet it.

Chapter Text

Tenshi Hinanawi looks on smugly as steam rises from a pot of congee boiling on the stove. Two bowls are set out on the table, ready and waiting; the Celestial waits, ladle in hand, for the moment Shion declares the food is done.

Incidentally, Shion has no idea where she got the ladle from. Possibly the Scarlet Devil Mansion, since she seems to have appropriated one of their aprons as well. The apron was made for a fairy, and very much doesn’t fit her; the shining steel ladle in her hand is the right size, but she is gripping it like an oni grips a club.

It is the third time that Tenshi has tried cooking congee. The first time was a mess that even Shion considered inedible; it turned out that the layabout Celestial from the land of plenty had a very peculiar idea of what constituted ‘a little’ salt. The second time, Shion tripped and upended the entire pot.

But this time seems promising. It occurs distantly to Shion that she may end up being the first person ever to taste Tenshi’s home cooking, and the thought sends a small flutter down her spine.

It’s been almost a month since Tenshi was banished from Heaven for her antics. For a few days Reimu allowed her to stay at the Hakurei Shrine, but it wasn’t long before the Celestial’s habit of picking fights for fun got her summarily banished from the shrine, too.

But the Hakurei Miko, while irritable, was also merciful – within reason. As she casually tossed Tenshi down the shrine steps, she took a moment to hurl Suika Ibuki after her, with instructions that either she built Tenshi a house or she would find herself persona non grata at any banquets for the rest of Reimu’s natural lifetime.

For an oni, a human’s lifetime was little more than a passing dream. But Reimu was one of the more fun humans, and Tenshi one of the more fun celestials, so the little oni saw no issues with doing a favour for both. A team of miniature construction workers drunkenly slapped together a shack on the Youkai Trail only a few hours later.

“When you’re really, truly strong, ya can afford to help people out from time to time,” the oni said to them with a stagger and a wink.

With a brand new piece of real estate that she personally hadn’t lifted a finger for, the first thing Tenshi did was install Shion as a live-in maid. She only thought to install things like beds and a stove a few days later.

Since then their meals have mostly consisted of ‘handouts’ (usually extracted from local youkai via strategically applied violence) or food spirited away from banquets at the shrine, occasionally punctuated by Tenshi’s abortive attempts at cooking. Shion is sure the fare is much worse than the peaches they have in Heaven, but Tenshi seems to be having the time of her life.

“So this is poor people food, huh?” she asks as she ladles the congee into two bowls. Mostly into two bowls. Tenshi’s ladlemanship could use practice. “Heh heh. I finally get to experience what you’ve been eating all this time, Shion.”

Shion gives her a wan smile; the truth is that for a goddess of poverty like herself, even simple congee is a luxury. There have been times when she’s subsisted on handfuls of raw millet, or gnawed at ears of unthreshed rice like a vermin. Compared to that, her days with Tenshi have been days of plenty.

“Tch. It’s awfully plain,” Tenshi complains after her first sip, as if she wasn’t the one who cooked it.

“Um… well, it is just rice, salt and water. Y-you could add things, if you wanted…”

“Hmph. Well… I kind of like it. It’s clean. All those peaches were so sweet I got sick of eating them, and they fill you up so much that you’ll throw up if you try to eat more than one at a time.”

To Shion, it sounds like paradise. Well, it explicitly was a paradise to reward celestials for their devotion. She can’t help but feel that Tenshi simply doesn’t understand what she’s lost, or what she had.

But that’s not entirely a bad thing. Because she doesn’t really understand the value of what she has, she gives it away freely. It is an odd notion, but Tenshi’s arrogance enables her generosity. She would give away her last kome of rice to a stranger, safe in the assumption that she could simply get more; the line between simpleton and saint is thin indeed.

As a Goddess of Poverty, Shion can’t help but worry about her. Not once did Tenshi ever question giving her a place to stay and food to eat, even with the knowledge of what she is and what her powers do. It is a blinding, brilliant level of boneheadedness.

About two weeks after they moved in together, Shion actually approached her about it. It took her that long to work up the courage. The heart she had deadened to endure so many misfortunes was beating painfully in her chest, filling up her lungs and her throat with some mysterious thing she couldn’t understand.

“So what if you make things harder for me?” Tenshi had asked, grinning devilishly. “A little resistance gets me going.”

Apparently, the earthbound youkai have been a worse influence on her than expected when it comes to her vocabulary, but Shion understands what she means.

Tenshi has always had everything handed to her. But she also has a confidence in herself that is absolutely impenetrable. She isn’t content with the easy ride. She seeks conflict. She seeks challenge . Shion is a burden, and that is her nature as a youkai; she can’t change it. But a burden is exactly what Tenshi is looking for.

“So,” the celestial asks, rubbing her nose. “What do you think of my cooking, huh? Not bad, right?”

Shion closes her eyes. The meal, frankly, tastes of nothing. But nothing is better than what she is accustomed to. In that shack, in the middle of nowhere, with a bowl of plain congee in her hand, she gives the only answer she can give.

“It, mm. It’s not bad,” she says, and gives an awkward smile.

“Huh. Well, next one’s going to be better. So look forward to it!”

Tenshi puffs out her chest, eager to prove herself. She probably isn’t aware that what she just heard is one of the most positive things Shion has said in many moons — and what she just witnessed was a smile as rare as a fire rat’s pelt. If she is aware, she’s not thinking about it. Not thinking about things is one of the many talents she takes pride in.

The night wears on. The banished celestial of heaven and the wretched goddess of poverty share their food, chat, and sleep under the same stars. They will have many more days together, but this one is at its end.

On another day, Tenshi and Shion are interrupted by an unwelcome visitor.

They’ve spent the morning fishing, at Tenshi’s insistence. Lately she’s been obsessed with the idea of catching a fish, salt-grilling it over a fire, and eating it. She wants to catch her dinner with her own hands.

But fishing is a skill and an art, requiring a certain amount of luck. Tenshi has an endless supply of good fortune, and Shion an endless supply of bad; they sometimes combine in mysterious ways, and form what can only be called unfortunate miracles.

So far, all they have caught is pufferfish. Disregarding why they’ve been hauling saltwater fish from a freshwater river, pufferfish are a fine example of a miraculous bounty that is entirely useless to them. Carefully prepared, it is one of the outside world’s finest and most expensive delicacies… but master chefs are hard to find in Gensokyo, and if nobody can prepare them, then nobody will buy them.

Needless to say, a salt-grilled fish dinner does not seem to be in the cards.

They are, at least, catching a lot. Tenshi is surprisingly good at fishing; she has a level of patience that doesn’t fit her personality. Perhaps her boring life in the Heavens has taught her how to handle tedium.

They are interrupted by a foot stomping angrily on the mud of the riverbank.

“Hey, quit it. You’re scaring the fish,” Tenshi grouses at the interloper. (Of course, she is lying; pufferfish do not scare easily, and go where they please.)

“Give my sister back. I need her for something,” Joon Yorigami demands, clacking her fan shut dramatically.

Joon’s expression — generally a waste of her otherwise good looks, but particularly foul today — makes it seem like an insect has crawled inside her left nostril as she barks her command.

She’s wearing fine silks and has a woven purse dangling from her arm, but the fact that she’s here can only mean she’s broke. Joon’s money is water in a desert, an all too temporary remedy for a thirst that beckons unto death. It is her nature to throw away coin in one breath and chase haplessly after it in the next.

But for all that she is trapped in an endless roulette wheel of callow pleasure and desperation, she has gained something from the experience. It has made her wily, ruthless, and motivated. A far cry from Shion, who has let constant misfortunes numb her heart and body until she can barely muster the will to move.

That difference in willpower is why she always bends before her sister. Even now, she can feel herself shrinking back, withering. The fresh buds of growth that Tenshi has planted tremble beneath Joon’s exacting scowl.

And yet.

And yet, even though she almost always buckles before Joon in the end, she feels… irritated. She understands why Joon jumped straight to negotiating with Tenshi, without bothering to ask what her sister feels about the matter, but it still rankles her. Given the choice between staying with Tenshi or going with Joon, Shion would choose the former in a heartbeat.

“Huh,” Tenshi says. She has an odd smile. A certain gleam in her eyes. “Sure. You can have her.”

For a half-second, Shion feels betrayed.

But in that half-second, Tenshi takes one of the many pufferfish they’ve collected and pitches it straight at Joon’s face. It hits with a satisfying slap and explodes, covering Joon’s fine silks in fish guts.

“Well? Did you just blow in from some frontier village or something? If you want something in Gensokyo, you’ve gotta fight for it with danmaku. Everyone knows that.” Tenshi’s smile widens. The spoiled celestial has spotted her next challenge, and eyes Joon like a predator sizing up its prey. “So sure, you can have her — if you win against me in a danmaku duel. And if I win, I’m keeping her.”

Joon says nothing. Perhaps the pufferfish venom has already paralyzed the muscles in her face; while the humble fish may not be able to kill the celestials, devils and gods that roam Gensokyo, it’s still quite potent.

“And while I’m at it, what’s with that dumb outfit? It’s hilarious. Fake rich people really are the funniest thing. Maybe you ought to buy some taste before you go outfit shopping. Honestly, the fish guts improves it. At least now you’re actually avant garde,” Tenshi continues, with the snobby voice of a real privileged girl. The Sword of Hisou leaps into her hand, ready and waiting.

Joon’s face flushes red with rage. She opens her fan, teeth gnashing, and joins the battle with a vicious hiss.

The air between them explodes into a swirl of colour and light.

The Sword of Hisou scoops divots from the ground, hurls clods of earth and rock as Tenshi swings. The ground quakes where she steps, but her feet are as light as a boxer’s; she weaves beautifully through complex waves of attacks, batting away stray bullets with a flick of her blade. Little by little, she inches closer, fighting gracefully for every foot.

By contrast, Joon simply lofts as many bullets into the air as her power will allow; like a true spendthrift, she holds nothing back. As a strategy it’s extremely gauche, but throwing an overwhelming amount of resources at a problem will often solve it.

But there exists no doubt in Shion’s heart that Tenshi will win.

The Celestial is no genius at danmaku. Not even close. She loses about as often as she wins. But the people she’s losing to are Reimu, Marisa, or the Great Youkai that hang about at the Hakurei Shrine. The best and most dangerous. The real monsters.

Every loss sharpens her. And she loves losing. She loves having to struggle, having to walk into each match at a disadvantage. Danmaku makes her heart beat and her blood sing, and she comes alive as her face is illuminated by an incoming hail of bullets.

Joon isn’t bad at danmaku. Not really. But she’s used to taking the easy way out whenever it presents itself — used to fighting opponents debilitated by Shion’s misfortune, or tagging out with her sister for a numbers advantage. She can’t stand against Tenshi.

Of course, Shion could end the fight in an instant, if she wanted to; all she’d have to do is use her powers to induce some bad luck for her obnoxious sister. But she doesn’t, and she won’t. She won’t cheapen Tenshi’s hard-earned victory — or, more to the point, deny her a chance to toy with her opponent. She simply allows herself to appreciate the manic joy on the Celestial’s face as she fights.

But no good thing lasts forever, and it is not long before Tenshi decides Joon is poor sport for a woman of her incredible skills. She hefts her blade; the Sword of Hisou glows a brilliant crimson.

An instant later, Joon Yorigami is swallowed in its light.

“Alright,” Reimu sighs. She has her gohei in hand, and is fidgeting with it idly. Never a good sign. “Explain.”

Shion tries very hard to give her a sheepish look, but it’s difficult in her current position. At the moment she is draped over Tenshi’s shoulders like a cape, her arms wrapped around the celestial’s neck as they stand on the veranda of the Hakurei Shrine.

Perhaps Tenshi cuts a heroic figure with a woman hanging off her. Perhaps not. But it is at least head-turning enough that Reimu has chosen to hear them out.

“Oh, Shion’s mine now,” Tenshi says, with a grin so bright it could light the heavens. “I won her in a spellcard duel, so I came to brag. I can get in on tonight’s banquet, right?”

Reimu blinks. It is not easy to surprise somebody who has lived the life Reimu has, but apparently Tenshi has passed the bar.

“That’s the sketchiest thing I’ve heard all week,” the miko grumbles. Gensokyo is a land of loose morals sometimes, but some things are a little bit too far. Abruptly, she shoots a glare at Shion. “Alright, you. If you need an intervention, this is your chance to say so. I don’t want to have to deal with this later.”

“…i-it’s okay. N-nothing’s… really changed.”

Even as she says it, Shion isn’t sure she’s telling the truth. On one hand, nothing has changed. Her relationship with Tenshi is the same as ever, and her current status as Tenshi’s cape is more of a prank from the celestial than anything else.

But there is a difference, somewhere. Somewhere deep down. Usually people fight to get rid of Shion, or try to foist her off on other people; today was the first time anybody has ever fought to keep her. The first time anybody has ever considered her a prize worth winning. Worth bragging about.

That feeling is bubbling up inside her, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s simpler if everything is the same as before. But if it’s true that nothing has changed, then… She has always belonged to Tenshi, long before today.

She presses her head against the celestial’s neck and closes her eyes; she doesn’t want to look at the world right now.

It really is just her luck to get so attached to a girl so out of her league, and so immature that she’ll never pick up on her feelings.

“So you two are like this all the time, then? At least dial it back when you’re in public,” Reimu grumbles. “Fine. I’ll drag the full story out of you at the feast. Just stay out of the damn kitchen. I don’t want people getting sick again.”

“U-um, Miss Tenshi has learned to cook, a little…” Shion says feebly.

“She’s not the one I’m worried about. Anyway, where’s your offering? Don’t think you’re getting in off the back of a funny story alone.”

Tenshi grins.

On the night of the feast, Reimu becomes the proud (?) owner of a whole basket of pufferfish, only one of which is slightly exploded. But one should never underestimate the Hakurei Miko and her connections; by the end of the evening, she has passed them all off to various witches, weirdoes, and representatives of the Eientei clinic, for whom the venom has interesting properties. She wordlessly pushes an extra scoop of rice onto Shion’s plate by way of a kickback; it isn’t much, but as one avatar of poverty to another, Shion appreciates the thought.

Laughter echoes. Sake flows. By the third time Tenshi repeats the tale of winning Shion from her sister, it has transformed into a knightly epic, a grand romance. Perhaps it is. Shion speaks little, but clings to Tenshi’s shoulders.

She drinks, just a little. Sipping from the celestial’s cup. A sleepy feeling washes over her.

Her cheeks and her ears are burning. But her belly and her heart are full.

It is a richness she has never known before. And one she hopes, with all her soul, will continue for at least a little longer.

Chapter Text

There were many reasons to visit the Myouren Temple, and most of them had to do with Byakuren. She was warm, kind, the face of local Buddhism, and a skilled practitioner of the wooden fish. Youkai flocked to see her, and understandably so.

But there were other attractions, for those who cared to look for them. There was Minamitsu’s Karaoke Corner, because she was the captain of the Palanquin Ship and what was a ship without a shanty or three? There was also Nazrin’s Scavenger Hunt, which was not actually optional and more something she press-ganged unsuspecting visitors into helping her with whenever a certain object went missing for the thirtieth time that month. Last (and, indeed, least), unbeknownst to almost anybody on the planet, there was the much rumoured ‘Symposium of Dogs.’

The founder and de facto leader of this group was Kyouko Kasodani, who was not a dog. But for this she could be forgiven, because she was bright and friendly and equipped with a broom with which she might lightly jab people who teased her. She never did, but there existed the possibility that she could, and that was terror enough for the common man to contend with. (The common man did not realise how lucky they were to escape with merely a disappointed glower and a jab from the Myouren Temple’s vorpal broom; somebody had recently explained the concept of ‘brown noise’ to Kyouko, and she found that she could indeed replicate it on command.)

The second member and vice president of the group was Aunn Komainu, who was also not a dog. But for this she could be forgiven, because she was bright and friendly and almost shared Kyouko’s colour scheme, which meant their power doubled once the duo was assembled. Aunn could then split herself in two to double the doubling, giving her a truly unprecedented level of appeal.

Although the Hakurei Shrine was indeed Aunn’s home base, it bore repeating that her hobby of guarding temples extended to both Shinto and Buddhism, and she often wandered across to the Myouren Temple whenever she wanted to partake of a genuinely religious atmosphere, in which the Hakurei Shrine was somewhat… lacking. She was a welcome presence in the Temple, and intelligent enough to hold the occasional religious debate with Byakuren herself.

The third member of the group, who had been forcibly kidnapped and inducted earlier that morning, was Momiji Inubashiri. Who was also not a dog, and could not be forgiven for this because she was emphatically not cute, not now, not ever, and if you said she was she would do violence in and around your general vicinity until you recanted. She was still half-wrapped in bandages and winced a little when she walked, but it would take a lot more than that to stop the infamous Storm-Crushing Fang.

Momiji was not a Buddhist and not particularly welcome in the temple (tengu tended to get lumped in with the Moriya Shrine when it came to the faith game), but she had dropped by to deliver a copy of the Bunbunmaru to Kyouko. The white wolf still remembered a time when the yamabiko had brought her a cold beer and listened to her troubles, and had decided to repay her with a free Bunbunmaru subscription so she could read the love fortunes at her leisure.

However, the wise tengu had been entrapped by promises of warm tea and temple gossip, before being forced to while away her time scritching her junior’s ears. Momiji’s long, nimble fingers and attention to detail made her a formidable ear-scritcher, and she found herself with Aunn lounging under her left hand and Kyouko under her right, soaking up all the scritches she had to offer.

For some, this may have been the picture of moral degeneracy. After all, dogs could not scritch each other’s ears in nature, and that was because the ability to do so would have accorded them too much power; however, since there were no actual dogs in the Symposium of Dogs, having a woman on each arm was completely acceptable.

Aunn, incidentally, had also brought Kyouko a newspaper — Reimu habitually destroyed her copy after reading the Agatha Chris Q sections because she did not like to be reminded that Aya existed, so Aunn thoughtfully took them and gave them out to people who might enjoy them. Beset by Bunbunmarus on all sides, Kyouko didn’t know what to do with herself.

Because they had both brought Kyouko a newspaper, Aunn and Momiji were now friends. After all, they shared a hobby. This was how the world worked. At least, it was how Aunn worked, and nobody was currently arguing with her so she must have been correct.

As the Symposium was a closely-guarded secret, one might wonder what clandestine location this assemblage of covert canines would colonize for their meetings. The answer, of course, was the front steps, which nobody ever took because the Myouren Temple catered largely to youkai and most youkai flew from place to place. Some youkai didn’t even have legs. Some had too many legs. The average leg amount of the youkai population was a statistic much speculated upon by bored mathematicians, and Ran Yakumo already knew the answer but refused to tell anybody.

There were two very notable people who were not invited to the Symposium.

The first was Sakuya Izayoi, the Dog of the Devil, who probably would have attended if asked because she occasionally forgot what a metaphor was when her brain was full of maidly concerns. Alas, nobody had asked her, and her masterfully baked macarons were urgently needed elsewhere. (Society couldn’t get enough of Sakuya’s macarons, because she deliberately didn’t make enough. This gave them an impossible and legendary appeal, befitting of her master.)

The second was Reimu, who traditionally showed up at places she wasn’t wanted and obligingly landed on the Temple steps with the force of a small meteor.

As the Miko brushed the dust off her skirt (dust which Kyouko had spent the morning sweeping away), Momiji allowed herself one, singular gulp.

On Youkai Mountain, Reimu was what was known as a Code Pink. (Saying Code Red-White every time she flew through the nearby airspace had gotten old quickly). Standard operating procedure was to point Aya at her and hope one of them killed the other, preferably while you were standing very far away. Not only was Aya nowhere to be seen, but Momiji would have been remiss to sacrifice her just as she was showing potential improvement at her shogi game; as such, the white wolf found herself staring down the barrel of a problem well above her pay grade.

The two other not-dogs, however, simply smiled and wagged their tails. Aunn even approached for a headpat.

“There, there… Wait. Aunn, why are you even here?” Reimu asked, narrowing her eyes. Patting Aunn was so automatic that it had taken her a few seconds to even think about it. “…Wait. Are you cheating on me with another religious institution?”

“It’s not cheating, Miss Reimu,” the komainu said earnestly. “My heart is big enough for two temples.”

“It doesn’t look big enough,” replied Reimu, who had either developed X-ray vision or was being spectacularly rude, and everybody was too scared to ask which. Eventually, however, she concluded that as Aunn could have two bodies, she also had two hearts, one of which belonged to her. Fifty percent was a passing grade in the Hakurei class. Satisfied, she nodded to nobody in particular, and turned to the next contestant.

“And you. What’s your reason for being here?” she asked, pointing an accusatory finger at Kyouko.

“Um, I live here, Miss Reimu.”

“A likely story,” Reimu scoffed, before rounding on Momiji. “As for you …Actually, who were you again?”

“I am leaving.” This was the correct answer, the one that beckoned to Momiji’s heart. And yet, it never actually reached her tongue. It was true that Reimu was above her pay grade, but unfortunately, her pay grade had recently increased. While it might have been acceptable for a lowly patrol tengu to tuck tail and run, as Aya’s assistant, she needed to stay and observe whatever nonsense the Hakurei maiden was perpetrating.

It took a few moments for this complex storm of emotions to run through Momiji’s heart, by which time Reimu had lost interest. “Well, whatever. I probably wouldn’t remember you anyway. Just don’t distract me while I’m trying to detect things.”

"What are we detecting, Miss Reimu?” Aunn asked. Detection was one of her secret skills, which were many, varied, and mostly useless.

“Her!” Reimu shouted, and pointed her finger at Kyouko again, which was really starting to feel quite rude.

Rudeness aside, nobody really knew how to interpret this. Kyouko seemed to have been quite thoroughly detected already. She wasn’t hiding. Everybody knew where she was. She was also one of the potentially loudest people anybody knew. A stealth expert, she was not.

“Um, can I ask why?”

“Because I get free food if I do.”

“O-oh. Well, um. I guess I’ll try to help, if I can?” Kyouko said.

“Heh,” Reimu snorted, tugging on the brim of an imaginary detective’s hat. She had planned to relieve one from a passing youkai on the way, but alas, there was a shortage of deerstalkers in the area. “Don’t think you can confuse me by pretending to be co-operative.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Miss Reimu!” Kyouko replied, wagging her tail.

Reimu hmm’d. She crossed her arms. She made a big show about pacing. Detectives paced all the time. It helped them think. She wasn’t actually thinking because every experience in her life had confirmed that doing so was pointless, but she looked like she might generate a thought at any time.

“Alright then. Here’s the rub. I have a complaint about you from an anonymous lamprey stand owner,” Reimu declared.

Perhaps there was a world in which ‘lamprey stand owner’ was a common career path. Perhaps, in that world, you couldn’t move without tripping over an errant lamprey. Perhaps that was the world Reimu lived in. It wasn’t, but it could have been.

“So, it’s Mysty?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just somebody who happens to sell grilled lampreys.”

“So it’s Mysty.”

“That’s not the point! The point is that she says you smell!”

Kyouko gasped. Aunn gasped. Kyouko gasped again, because yamabiko were not known for letting anybody have the last word.

“You don’t smell. At least no more than anybody else,” Momiji said, with a sigh.

“How do you know that?” Reimu demanded.

“I have a nose.”

“Everyone has a nose. I know people who collect noses!”

“But mine is a wolf’s nose,” she explained patiently. “Wolves are very good at smelling things.”

“I don’t think you smell either, Kyouko. Although my nose is better at smelling things like evil,” Aunn offered.

“It doesn’t matter whether she smells or not. The client said she did, so she does. And what the client says she smells of… is women! Why would that be, huh?”

“She is a woman,” Momiji interjected. “What else would she smell like?”

“Women don’t smell of women,” Reimu said loftily. “They smell of alcohol. Try to keep up.”

This was a stunning revelation from the intrepid detective. So stunning, in fact, that nobody had any idea how to respond to it.

“So! Because you smell of women, we know you have a job. Or two jobs. Multiple jobs!” the miko continued hotly.

“…um, Miss Reimu? What’s wrong with that?”

Reimu paused. The truth was that being a shrine maiden was less of a job and more a vocation, as was loafing endlessly on the veranda; as a result, she had only a dim concept of what gainful employment looked like. She had the vague idea that it was a great sin of some kind, but hadn’t quite decided who should be punished for it.

“It doesn’t matter! What matters is that you’re being unfaithful.”

“Unfaithful?” Kyouko echoed. Several times, each time slightly quieter than the last. Old habits died hard. “But I’m a priest-in-training…”

“I think she means unfaithful in your relationships,” Aunn said helpfully.

“That makes even less sense, though. Mysty and I aren’t dating.”

“You’re not?” Momiji asked, one of her fluffy and immaculate eyebrows rising. “But… Well, not to be rude, but when I met her at the lamprey stand, she was covered in your scent.”

“That’s just because Mysty only has one bed, so we have to sleep together if I’m tired after a set. Also, we try on each other’s clothes sometimes.” She paused; the expression on her face became a little wistful. “It’s fun to feel fashionable, at least once in a while.”

The dubious expression remained on Momiji’s face. “…And you’re sure you’re not dating?”

“I… um, I think so?”

“No, you’re definitely dating,” Reimu pronounced.

“W-we are?!”

“Listen up, you,” Reimu hissed, leaning in close. “You can have whatever relationships you like behind closed doors, but I don’t want Aunn getting any weird ideas. You’re dating, and that’s final.”

“And you don’t think she’ll get weird ideas from watching you and that magician?” Momiji asked.

“Excuse me? We sleep in completely separate futons most of the time. And I’ve only worn her clothes once, and I didn’t even want to!”

Perhaps it was true that familiarity bred contempt, and Momiji, whose affinity for contempt was surprisingly high, had already grown comfortable enough to snipe at one of the most trigger-happy youkai exterminators in the setting. Aya would have been proud, or at least spectacularly amused.

Aunn, the great and wise, decided to tactically occupy the space between them and angle her head in such a way that it was easy to pat. If Reimu’s hands were occupied by patting, that meant they were unavailable for dispensing violence.

“Well, whatever. Since you’re here and you’re the expert on smelling, tell us which woman Kyouko smells of besides Mystia. Whoever it is, I’m going to track her down. Now, spill the beans, before I start asking uncomfortable questions!”

“I live with a newspaper tengu. My life is full of uncomfortable questions,” the wolf grumbled. “You won’t have to look far, anyway. The only other woman she smells of is Aunn.”

Reimu looked at Aunn. She looked at Momiji. She looked at Kyouko, who had obliging begun to pat Aunn’s head because nobody else had and it seemed a shame not to.

The Hakurei miko’s brow furrowed.

The culprit was her dog. Well, not her dog. Her minion? Her daughter? Aunn lived in her house and was one of the few youkai actually younger than her, so there was a certain amount of protectiveness Reimu was obligated to feel. She couldn’t hang Aunn out to dry. There had to be a better way.

Perhaps in another world, Reimu’s long-dormant mind whirred slowly in action and enacted a great and devious plan to clear the komainu of all wrongdoing and finger some poor schmuck — probably Momiji, since she was standing there and Reimu couldn’t even remember her name — as the woman making moves on Kyouko.

But instead, Reimu turned to Kyouko, gravely put out her hand with a palm upturned, and said:

“Paw.”

Kyouko’s ears wilted. “Um, Miss Reimu? I’m not actually a dog.”

“Paw.”

Sensing imminent danger, Kyouko obligingly put her palm over Reimu’s hand, which snapped shut like a vice.

“See, this is your problem. You’re way too quick to hold hands with random women! No wonder that birdbrain’s gotten so many misunderstandings. And your palms are too sweaty,” Reimu complained. “But that’s nothing we can’t fix with a bit of relationship advice, probably. It doesn’t matter what women you smell of if we just make sure Mystia doesn’t get the wrong idea, right?”

A normal youkai (or a normal person, in point of fact) would have valiantly fought the urge to laugh. Reimu’s love life, as well as her interpersonal relationships in general, were famously messy. Or famously non-existent, depending on who you asked. Advice on the topic from her was a bit like a chocolate toothbrush — not just useless, but actively counterproductive.

But Kyouko Kasodani was not a regular youkai. She wasn’t even a regular dog. Instead of politely stifling a giggle, her face lit up like fireworks in the summer sky.

“Relationship advice? From you, Miss Reimu? Really?! I’m so excited!” she all but howled. Her ears fluttered in excitement, and her wagging tail stirred up all the dust she was supposed to be sweeping.

Momiji and Aunn were dumbfounded. Even Reimu had the good grace to look confused; she held a fairly good opinion of herself, but knew she was among the brave, shining minority.

“Don’t you get it?” Kyouko asked, when her two fellow not-dogs did not share her enthusiasm. “You should both know better than anybody! Miss Reimu is the one who writes the love fortunes in the tengu newspaper you two bring me!”

“That’s… true,” Aunn agreed, cautiously. “But she only writes about half of them.” Technically speaking she was correct; ‘half’ simply meant one of two portions. The portions did not have to be equal, or even approach a fifty percent split. As long as you split something in two, you had halves, no matter what their respective sizes might be.

“Oh, everyone knows that. But that’s what makes it special! You open the paper every day and you wonder whether it will be a Reimu day or not. It’s like an unexpected present every time!”

"Wait, everyone knows? How?! And how do you know which ones I’m doing, specifically?!” Reimu bawled. She seized her gohei and pointed it in Momiji’s direction. “Is Aya ratting me out or something?”

As funny as it might be to drop Aya in hot water (with the full knowledge that, inevitably, she would find a way to wriggle out of it with her tailfeathers intact), Momiji was forced to consider who she was dealing with. Reimu was very much of a ‘shoot the messenger’ persuasion, and usually just shot consecutive messengers until she worked her way up to whatever was bothering her.

“Regrettably, no. You have something of a tell. A very… blindingly obvious one, at that.”

Reimu stomped forwards, and for a moment Momiji thought her days of grilling were done. But Kyouko, still beaming and eminently pattable, stepped forward.

“It’s one of the special features of Miss Reimu’s fortunes!” she said. “The other ones all use the Eastern Zodiac, but Miss Reimu uses the western one.”

Reimu blinked. Then the red-white maiden gradually became pink.

“I just copied the one Aya showed me when she first asked! Why would she show me western horoscopes if she wanted the eastern ones instead?! And I even drew out those weird little squiggle icons they all have!”

“In other words, you just copied what was there and were too lazy to think about what you were copying,” Momiji grumbled. “Even Aya actually puts effort into her work.”

“It’s not a bad thing, Miss Reimu! It makes them a lot more fun. Me and Mysty don’t really know what an Aries or a Cancer is, so we just pick the ones we like that day. Oh! And sometimes we pick different ones and compete to see which one comes true. Kind of like picking a sports team. Go Libra!”

“So in other words, Marisa gives actual fortunes, and Reimu just gives you a menu.”

“But it’s a good menu! They work!” Kyouko contested. “If I can get relationship advice from Miss Reimu, I’m sure I’ll be able to fix whatever’s bothering Mystia, so…”

She turned to Reimu with eyes that glistened with faith. Buddhist faith, but still faith. So did Aunn, for reasons known only to Aunn. Perhaps she was throwing her weight as Kyouko’s friend and fellow small animal(?) into the mix as a persuasive measure.

Usually, people only relied on Reimu because they had no choice in the matter. They knew she worked, but she wasn’t the medicine they wanted. But Kyouko, in defiance of all reason, actually thought Reimu could help — and actively welcomed it.

Under the light of such pure, unadulterated belief, Reimu wilted. She frowned. She gnashed her teeth.

And then, finally, she spoke.

“Paw,” she said.

“Umm… But you told me I shouldn’t…”

“Paw.”

Once again, Kyouko dubiously laid her palm over Reimu’s. Or, well, she laid it over Aunn’s, who had gotten there first. Reimu squeezed gently, and gave a final sigh.

“I’m not giving you any relationship advice,” she barked.

Aunn was confused. Kyouko was distraught. Momiji should have felt relieved, since relationship advice from Reimu could only ever complicate the situation, but she was still a tengu and her nose for trouble had remained strong even after becoming Aya’s assistant. She heard it: the quiet, unspoken but, the however, the twist.

“I don’t know a lot about love,” Reimu said. “But what I do know is this: whenever I want a problem solved, I have to do it myself. Come on, Aunn. We’re going to do some detective work.” She paused. “And by that, I mean we’re going to get Mystia drunk and drag it out of her.”

She cracked her knuckles, which was a worrying move for somebody who only intended to go out for a pleasant drink. Kyouko reached out in a half-hearted attempt to stop her, but knew as well as anybody else that stopping Reimu was a pipe dream at best. At least Aunn, blessed not-dog that she was, flashed the rest of the Symposium a smile that would, in any other context, have been reassuring.

“Don’t worry. What Reimu wants most of all is peace,” Aunn declared as the miko set off, looking far less enthusiastic than she arrived. “And free food. But she won’t be able to enjoy the free food if she’s got a guilty conscience, so it’ll be fine.”

“Will it, though? I don’t think the Hakurei Miko generally feels guilty over beating up youkai,” Momiji pointed out. But Aunn had already darted off in Reimu’s wake, hopefully to provide some level of… sanity? Maybe?

“Ahaha… haha… hah. The… the world of dharma is filled with light. The world of dharma is filled with light. The world of dharma is filled with light…” Kyouko muttered to herself.

“What does that mean?” Momiji asked, no expert on Buddhist scripture.

“I don’t know. Lady Byakuren always says it, so it must mean something pretty deep, and I always feel really calm after she says it. So for me, it’s just kinda something I say when I don’t really understand what’s going on but I hope it’ll turn out anyway. Like stress relief.”

“I see,” Momiji said slowly. She allowed a few seconds to pass, for decorum’s sake. “Have you tried shogi? I find it works well as a distraction when you’re worried about troublesome birds. I’ve a portable set with me, if you’d like to give it a go.”

Kyouko’s ears flattened a little. “That’s very kind of you, Miss Momiji. But… Um, I think Lady Byakuren would tell me to try meditating instead.”

“Shogi is meditation,” the wolf retorted, already pulling the board from her bag. “Here, I’ll teach you the rules. Let the rest of the world handle itself for a while, and just play.”

“Well… Um, I feel bad asking about this, but… Don’t you have work to do, Miss Momiji?”

The wolf smiled wryly. “Already finished. My bird hasn’t been giving me enough tasks to do. I keep telling her I’m healthy enough to do more, but, well… I suppose it isn’t a problem. She’s only hurting herself if she can’t delegate properly.”

A shogi piece clacked onto the board. A few seconds later, Kyouko mirrored the move exactly. The symposium of dogs was over, but Grand Myouren Shogi Expo was only beginning.