Cicada song pierced the air in a ceaseless drone. Reminders of the Sanctuary’s inconvenient nature beaded all over Komakusa Sannyo’s body on the walk leading up to the house. To the hazy air, she questioned how she convinced herself it was a good idea to come here. The answer was only louder, more intense cicada song, screaming on her behalf after the heat had sapped her strength. Mountain hag though she was, she’d long grown unused to wilder, more unspoilt terrain.

Secluded paths inevitably gave way to clearings invisible from the air. Sannyo reached into her collar on instinct, confusing herself a moment before she remembered the bag in her hand. Shaking her head, she made her way onto the proper path, noting with some pleasure that the stones were at least not spattered with the absolute maximum of mud and filth. A bit of weeding would need doing in the diminutive garden, but it was hardly at the roughest it could look. Gazing out to one side at a distance, the privy looked as if it was yet to succumb to nature and collapse in on itself. What gave most pause was the roof of the house.

A wound gaped from the wood where a tile once sat, the cedar viscera dyed red in the dying light beaming through the treetops. Observation suggested the missing tilework had probably been split in half. Sannyo’s lips twisted at the thought of those clay tiles she had hand-selected, an artisan’s work for which she’d rendered destitute untold gamblers. Taking a deep breath, she fought down the urge to emptily reach into her collar again. All in good time, she placated herself.

“Ah,” piped a mild voice as Sannyo reached the threshold, “I wondered when I might see you again.”

“No issue, I trust?” Sannyo prodded her interlocutor with a chill in her voice that would have otherwise been welcome in the heat.

Standing in arm’s reach, though still a step back as always, Chirizuka Ubame peered at Sannyo in her measured, sororal way. A struggle between reaching out to her fellow mountain hag and retreating played out in her brow. At length, she softly shook her head before assuming a cheerier, if more temperate, demeanour. “Come, I’ll put on tea. There’s still those leaves you brought before.”

Ubame had indeed reserved enough of the fine tea, probably in anticipation of a day like this. The overheated Sannyo felt little enthusiasm for a hot drink but said nothing to dissuade her deep-mountain sister’s pretenses at hospitality. Questions arose around signs of Ubame’s lacking diligence in more minor upkeep, like the splotches on the shouji and a layer of dust in the barren alcove. A damp, incipiently mildewed smell also drifted from the far corners, layered atop a pervading stagnancy in the air. All the place lacked was notes of straw and dung. However much her nose crinkled, Sannyo had only herself to blame on that account. She breathed out in a great huff. Seasons had come and gone, after all.

The shifting sun of the coming evening had cast a gloom over the house interior. Reclining on the floor, Sannyo felt a lethargy wash over her, more than just fatigue from the hike. Her hand had unconsciously crept to her collar once more and listlessly fished between her sweat-slicked breast and the fabric of her kimono. Slowly, like treacle, her thoughts ran in an insistent ooze toward the bag she’d deposited on the floor upon entering. No, she tried to tell herself, Ubame would go into conniptions. However much she needed it at the moment. However little attention the lady of the house paid to other stains and smudges.

Without the indication of footsteps, Ubame materialised without warning from the dimness. She set the teaware on the low table and crisply slid the dirtied shouji open, indicating the veranda. “I don’t mind if you smoke…”

“No, that’s all right,” Sannyo replied with great difficulty. Once more, her thoughts oozed toward the bag, so she nudged it away with her foot. “I really shouldn’t. I’m cutting back, in fact.”

“Ah, is that right?” Ubame murmured, pulling the door to swifter than she’d opened it.

Sannyo sat up and took to her tea with only the barest enthusiasm. A long but shallow sip allowed her to pretend there wasn’t a searching gaze running across her face for a moment. She pulled one of her simple, inexpensive fans from her belt, waving it as much in the vain hope of blowing away the questions already lingering in the air like soot in the kitchen as to cool herself.

Mildly irritated by the humidity, she thrust the tea away from her. “Those windchimes I gave you. What happened to them? I’d have thought you’d hung them by now. It’s the season, you know. And I hope you’ve still got proper mosquito netting. I won’t tolerate it a single night if I’m being bitten. It’s my burden to live as much by my skin as my wits.”

“Your skin is looking quite lovely. You don’t even look to be powdering yourself,” Ubame appraised her hag-sister with no small trace of envy in her tone. Running a hand along her own arm, she showed traces of lightening her own complexion, her uncovered skin a sandy tan tone from sun exposure. She quickly blushed and hid her arm, eager to move on to other pleasantries lest she be teased. “I suppose you must be doing well with your… establishment. That kimono is new, isn’t it? It looks terrific on you. Far better than these drab old things I made.”

“I asked about the windchimes. I’d like to hope you didn’t drop them or smash them by accident.” Sannyo snapped her fan shut, rapping on the low table with it, the sharp noise causing Ubame as much visible discomfort as the sharp words.

Swallowing hard, Ubame ran her fingers through her long, blue-tinged silver hair, tossing it sheepishly over her shoulder. Her voice softened. She pretended to examine the shouji. “Not at all. I’d just thought of getting around to putting them up. Why, the other night, I found myself thinking it sure was humid. Summer caught me by surprise. The cold felt like it might well drag on for far longer. I did at least hang the nets. A while earlier, even. The bugs have been persistent.”

A deafening burst of cicada song ripped through the humid air before Ubame could go on. The house was left under a buzzing silence as the noise tapered off. Remembering herself admidst that reverberation, Sannyo resumed her more lukewarm cup of tea. The remaining orange-red beam of light that fell over the room disappeared and reäppeared as a breeze blew through the treetops. Previously overheated, Sannyo had forgotten that and now felt a slight chill. She stowed away her fan and found her handkerchief in her sleeve, swabbing the beaded sweat away from her skin. Even after she was done, she held the kerchief pinched between her unsteady fingers.

Ubame fidgeted where she sat. The paper doors had already undergone a thorough inspection, so she peered over her shoulder at the hearth. A pot sat suspended on the hook, but no flame danced beneath it. Looking at Sannyo a moment, she inclined her head questioningly. Instead of answering, the visiting hag-sister pulled herself up from the floor, dug in her effects, and produced the metallic dragon-patterned lighter she kept. If nothing else, the hearth was a good enough substitute for the moment. She felt the room already too dark as it was. Though her fingers wouldn’t coöperate, she did manage to finally catch the kindling, encouraging the sparks with a gentle breath. Content to be illuminated by the gentle glow of the fire, she sat down a short distance from the hearth, joined by Ubame after some hesitation.

The distance left between herself and Ubame felt vast in that gloom. In the rare times other hag-sisters gathered, some sat practically atop one another. Though never that type, Sannyo and Ubame were certainly far from distant. Of anyone, Sannyo sat closest to Ubame, even if there remained a distance. Then again, perhaps it made sense; the Sanctuary’s designated steward could ill afford to appear to favour anyone. Sannyo still found herself wanting for some small amount of warmth next to her and hugged herself.

Her handkerchief was still balled between her fingers. She laughed grimly, dropping it on the floor without much care. “You think I should smoke?”

“Have I ever said you shouldn’t?” Ubame countered softly with a surreptitious glance towards Sannyo’s luggage. She got up as if meaning to retrieve it but instead took the disused teacup, setting it where Sannyo could reach as she sat back down.

“You really don’t seem to like it. You’d probably like me to quit, wouldn’t you? Even with my job.” She picked the kerchief up and threw it in Ubame’s direction, the fabric drifting to a stop on the floor next to her. “Maybe because of it.”

“Your tea is getting cold.”

Sannyo drained the remainder of the cup. The cooled tea ran across her tongue with a bitterness she found hard to tolerate. How inconvenient to be able to taste again. “This was hardly the nicest I could find. There are far better out there.”

“But they’d be a waste on us, wouldn’t they?” Ubame collected the empty cup but made no move to do anything with it, sitting back down and twisting absently at the ends of her hair. “Well, on me, really. No one else has come by in a while. Except…”

“Who?” asked Sannyo, with full knowledge of the visitor’s identity.

“Do I have to say it? I know how it goes with the two of you. I’m not doing her any favours, just so you know.”

Sannyo sat with her chin cradled in her hand. The tea did little to take away from her worsening sense of fatigue. “Talking to her is a favour enough,” she said through an undecorous yawn.

“I couldn’t talk to anyone, in that case.”

“What a shame. Having to live a mountain hag’s life. Doomed to loneliness, filth, and exposure to the elements. Just defending your little plot of dirt from everybody ‘til the end of time.”

Ubame got back up to lower the pot over the hearth, chucking on more wood from a dwindling pile to feed the flame. “Yes, yes, doing chores. I need to split firewood tomorrow, in fact. Don’t feel obligated to help. Now, how about supper? I was down at the river today, and—”

“Sorry, the heat killed my appetite. If it’s all the same, I think I’d like to bed down. If you can believe it, I haven’t slept well lately.” Pushing herself off the floor, Sannyo rose uneasily, as if she were rusted over. She cursed under her breath at the soreness in her feet as she stumbled for the ladder to the upper floor.

“The guest bedding’s waiting for you in the far corner. Same as last time,” Ubame called after her.

Sannyo had barely needed the reminder, locating the futon and sheets straight away with relief. Feeling a twinge of guilt over her sudden retreat, she called back down to Ubame. “They look like they’re holding up nicely. You can hardly notice the patchwork.”

“I tried. Shame about that old kimono, but it wasn’t going to see much use here. Thanks again for letting me use it, by the way. Hope everything’s still comfortable.”

“I think so. Good night.”

“Sweet dreams.”

---

Even the early morning brought little respite from the summer. Sannyo lay on the upper floor with no small amount of misery holding her there. No matter the noise Ubame made on the lower floor, every inch of her refused to rise from the futon. Her thoughts wistfully circling her bag, which lay lost to the ages on the ground floor, she finally managed to roll on her side and curl into a ball, losing consciousness again amid the storm of early activity. Echoing across her mind, she heard her hag-sister call her name several times but didn’t stir. Silence eventually reigned over the house again.

That silence was broken by ever voluminous cicada cries and the tinkling of windchimes. At first, Sannyo thought they were phantasmal sounds from the depths of her dreams, yet they became more and more real. Hazy consciousness gave way to reluctant wakefulness. Sannyo tossed about on the bedding but found it too warm now. But for the ringing of the windchimes, the heat might have been unbearable. She could no longer hope to lie around anymore. She threw the covers off and crawled out from under the mosquito netting, obliged to credit Ubame’s small favours.

The humidity hadn’t lessened at all when Sannyo properly woke up, and plenty of sun penetrated the treetops to warm the Sanctuary’s primal forests, even as the day crawled into the gentle diminishment of early evening. Dragging herself into the daylight, she took a cold bath by the well to wash off the night’s accumulated sweat, a temporary relief before no doubt steaming yet again. Cold leftovers served as her breakfast before she set out to find Ubame, bag hanging on her shoulder.

From the look of it, the small fields a short distance from the house had been watered where necessary, and the summer heat accentuated a fœtid scent rising from them. Sannyo wrinkled her nose, cursing that her senses had grown so sensitive. She was ready to curse the whole idea of settled living in her daylight malaise but quickly spotted a silhouette some ways off. Ubame had traded her habitual crown for a more practical straw sunshade, but that wasn’t enough to make her totally unrecogniseable from behind. Seeing her working under the shade of an umbrella made Sannyo smile as she approached. Her hag-sister had the strangest priorities at times.

Raising her hatchet high, the metal glinting in the sunlight, Ubame gauged the piece of firewood in front of her with care before swinging downward. The wood split cleanly with a great thud. The hatchet buried itself in a rent in the stump the hag straddled. Sannyo stood back, watching Ubame repeat the same process, a pile of wood slowly gathering next to her. The glisten of sweat accentuated the toasty, sandy tone that the summer sun had lent to her skin. When she stopped a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow, Ubame finally seemed to notice Sannyo and looked a bit startled. She stood up, gathering some of the cut wood in her arms as she put a slight distance between them.

“Good evening,” the surprised Ubame offered, inclining her head gently in a quick bow.

“Evening. Allow me,” greeted Sannyo before bending down to take some of the wood herself. “Sorry for not being up earlier. Guess I must have caught you finishing up?”

“Ah? Oh, yes, finishing up. I was. Though I can’t be too sure, honestly. After all, you could be staying another…”

Sannyo pursed her lips. Already feeling heated by the sunlight, she ducked partly underneath the umbrella. “That much is up to you. If it’s a problem, I’ll go soon enough. Could be very soon, if you’d like.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant!” Ubame shook her head sharply. The stack of wood nearly dropped from her arms in her vehemence. “I just wasn’t sure. That’s all. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like! I mean, it’s just as much… your place… as mine. Right?”

“By some rights, yes. But,” contradicted Sannyo, stabilising her hag-sister’s load with a gentle hand, “I still leave that decision to you. It’s your home, after all. I just helped where I could. That’s the only reason I like to have a look every so often. Call it pride.”

Some thought played across Ubame’s face, but she simply shook her head again and gestured towards the house, turning to carry her part of the wood. Sannyo laughed softly at Ubame’s evasiveness.

“I won’t be offended if you just ask.”

Ubame slowed her pace, adjusted her hold on the firewood, then came to a sudden halt. Reproach lingered around her eyes and lips, though so too did an admonishing sense of concern. “You can’t blame me, can you? When a sister hunts a boar without meaning to eat it — as they used to say — you can’t help but wonder. Sometimes that boar ends up fighting back. As we know you found out.”

That particular injury had scarred over to the point that it didn’t hurt all the time, but it did itch in that moment. There had been far more heated moments over the matter before. She looked over at a spot where she and Ubame had even come to blows some time ago, almost wanting to laugh. Part of her wondered if that willingness to laugh was the haggish fierceness having fled her. Then again, if that were so, Ubame had similarly lost some of that edge, judging by the ease with which she stood within arm’s reach. That, Sannyo felt, might have been among her sins wrought of leaving the Sanctuary.

Her hand had drifted closer to the bag, desperate to seek its comfort. Scolding it, she took a two-handed hold on her part of the firewood. “You’ve still got your life here. You don’t have to understand mine or anyone else’s. The yamanba way.”

“A river that throws up even kappa, I see. Good to know that side of you hasn’t changed,” Ubame huffed, allowing herself a naked frown in her otherwise measured face.

They resumed walking as if by mutual agreement; in truth, Sannyo had taken the first step. Sannyo assured herself that she wasn’t rushing, yet there was an undeniable urge on her part to see the house with fresher eyes. The sunlit glint of Ubame’s hatchet was almost blinding in her mind’s eye. The memory of the hatchet wound on the roof, gaping and viscerally red in the dying sun, caused her to wince as if she’d sustained the blow.

They’d made it back near the fields when she turned around. She’d pulled ahead of Ubame by several paces without entirely meaning to do so. Her unpainted, unprotected lips pulled into a narrow line even as she wanted to speak up. As she caught up, Ubame remained a step or two removed, glancing over her shoulder like she felt eyes on her. She shifted uneasily on feet that were eager to keep moving. She made mention of further chores that needed doing before the limited daylight exhausted itself.

Sannyo had come close to speaking when a song sped through the trees, a boisterous, rollicking ditty that announced its singer far ahead of their arrival. Spurred by the song, Ubame broke ahead of Sannyo, brushing past with less care than before, concern having clouded over her expression. The woodpile was in mild disarray when Sannyo caught up, and Ubame was scrambling about the kitchen, making tea in a hurry.

“Did I show up at a bad time?” Sannyo asked.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone. Not you, not anyone.” Ubame swiftly grabbed one of the pieces of firewood Sannyo was carrying, tossing it into the stove. Frowning at her empty water jar, she shook the kettle pleadingly. “Sorry, but would you fetch some water?” she asked Sannyo, on the verge of sighing.

“Right.”

The song grew louder as Sannyo retreated to the well to fill the water jar. She couldn’t place the singer right off, but a foreboding raised her hackles in much the same way as Ubame. Possibly worse. Her unoccupied hand was caressing the metal endpiece of her neglected pipe. Clicking her tongue loudly, she forced herself to unhand it, throwing down her bag without any care for the contents, cursing and reprimanding herself for carrying it in the first instance as she conveyed the water jar back around. A worried look from Ubame alerted her to an excess of tension in her face. She shook her head, silently continuing her denial that anything was the matter.

Though she’d long cast aside any notion of territory as her sisters understood it, an echo of the yamanba instinct, an inherent knowledge of intrusions upon one’s space, rippled across her body, and she stood stiffly around the doorway. Brief glimpses of Ubame showed her to be as affected, her grip on the kitchenware vice-like. Sufficiently startled, she might have hurled the boiling kettle at full force.

The interminable singing grew to a crescendo that almost drowned out the singer’s stomping footsteps and the undulating cicada song. Sannyo gritted her teeth, ready to lash out at soon as they were fully visible. The heat haze of the day and the scattered light rendered the approaching visitor little more than an outline at a distance. A swinging arm keeping time caught the light here and there. Silvery hair glittered at intervals. As they drew closer, Sannyo saw that the approaching visitor was hefting a hatchet of their own over their other shoulder. A ribbon prominently decorated the hatchet’s handle, an accent somehow meant to betray something of the owner’s tastes or make the fearsome blade appear less threatening. The effect was ludicrous to Sannyo’s eyes.

In a shock of recognition without even glimpsing their face, Sannyo quit the doorway, so devoid of tension that she felt likely to splay out on the floor. Ubame shot her a questioning look, but Sannyo merely shook her head, waving limply towards the doorway. She hadn’t the will or the energy to deal with the most likely appearance. Any of her myriad other hag-sisters would have been preferable, even feeling how she did.

“Hey, Sis! You alive in there? Can’t smell much over the fields,” erupted a full-throated call from the doorway. Dirt-caked feet pattered onto the step up without much regard for protocol. Ubame was already dashing to intercept, sloshing water from a tub in hand, forgetting the tea momentarily. “Woah, that’s some greeting! Not even a hello?”

“Sorry, but I really do wish you’d wash off first. You’ve been walking through mud, haven’t you? You could at least make some sandals. How many times have I shown you?” clucked Ubame, nudging the caller back onto the step.

“Sheesh, okay, but let me do it this time!”

“I’ve heard that one before. I’m not cleaning up any more mess because you can’t be thorough enough. Come on, hold still.”

Amid protests and the sound of a brush being applied to skin rigorously, Sannyo took it upon herself to at least see that the tea didn’t become a total loss. Working in the darkness of kitchen at least allowed her to tune out the struggle playing out in the entryway. It also allowed her to clean up after her flustered hag-sister, who truthfully had little room to speak on leaving messes. She was filling the teapot when she noticed Ubame returning, followed by a wavy mess of silvery hair poking through the entryway that jerked her back into the reality she had so hoped to escape.

Looking every bit the mountain hag she was, sans her beribboned hatchet, Sakata Nemuno scowled into the dim house, her previous flippant cheer erased all at once. Ubame quickly beckoned for Nemuno to join her at the low table in something of a diplomatic move, but the request fell on deaf ears. Nemuno rounded on Sannyo in the kitchen and regarded her with a self-satisfied flashing of teeth. She held in her hand the dragon-shaped pipe abandoned by the well.

---

After an initial furor, the two yamanba and their estranged hag-sister sat in a silence that, whilst not entirely companionable, was hardly disagreeable to the latter. Ubame maintained a studied neutrality at the table, sitting between the other two, offering in succession apologetic looks at Sannyo and a cheery face to Nemuno. Sannyo could empathise. Even if blowing her peculiar smoke often smoothed out the most hostile situations in a gambling house, it still behooved her to maintain a careful balancing act between parties most times. Especially for the sake of maintaining the most profitable of relations. The very thought provoked a minor ache in her temples at the moment, and by extension Ubame presented a mildly tiresome sight. If not for the barest sense of cultivated civility, she would have retreated to the second floor.

Nemuno, ever the coarse one, only registered her annoyed incomprehension at the care the other two were showing. The first things from her mouth upon spotting Sannyo had been bared-faced attempts at antagonising her. After being wrangled to the low table, she persisted for a short time before realising that Ubame would only continue to reprimand her and Sannyo would only continue to answer with icy silence. She now sat with her chin cradled in her hand, like a scolded child, propped against the table on her elbow, absently toying with the pipe she’d retrieved. If Sannyo could say anything, it was that Nemuno’s pale fingers, though she had callouses that were poorly disguised in patches, were flattered by the pipe, long and elegant in their own way. Her thin lips, too, had a glossiness that indicated she was applying at least rudimentary accents. Her skin tone also lacked the sandiness of Ubame’s even if she was clearly running around; perhaps she had given Ubame the idea to work under an umbrella. Sannyo allowed herself a little smile at her other hag-sister’s small vanities.

A calm eventually settled over the low table under the extended silence. Ubame had slid more to Nemuno’s side so they could exchange murmured news. At some point, seemingly at Nemuno’s request, the more senior hag-sister had begun to work out the tangles in the wavy mass of hair and fashion them into loose braids, tying them with ribbons that Nemuno had brought with her. Her pleased expression rubbed against Sannyo’s memory of prior antagonism, and some small chill from within iced over whatever pleasantness there was to be found in the sight. As if sensing the shifting current, Ubame hurriedly finished her work and moved to Sannyo’s end, refilling her depleted tea and gently touching her hand.

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Hey, Sis,” Nemuno spoke up, breaking off from admiring her newfound braids. Reaching into the belt-like cloth wrapped around her waist, she produced a wad of paper. Peeling it open, she grinned wide. “I picked up some of these for you. They were still kicking when I found them, so they oughta make a nice snack.”

Ubame pulled away from Sannyo to have a look at the parcel. Though she registered no distress at what she saw, there was a certain cloudy look in her eyes. She gently covered the parcel with her hand, glancing towards Sannyo out of the corner of her eye. “They certainly do look fresh, but maybe we can have these a bit later.”

“Huh? Why’s that? They’re better fresh,” Nemuno groused, glowering in annoyance.

“They’ll be perfectly fine later, Nemu. Besides,” explained Ubame with a searching glance before settling on something in the direction of the kitchen, “yes, I have a packet of rice crackers already. Those would be better with our tea. Let me fetch them.”

Sannyo pre-empted her in heading for the kitchen. “Allow me. The shelf, right?”

Over muttered objections from Ubame, Sannyo searched the open shelf, coming across the aforementioned rice crackers. She hazarded a peek at Nemuno’s parcel as she set down the rice crackers at the table and pulled a face at what she saw. Catching sight of her reaction, the grinning Nemuno gave a sharp, cackling laugh. Sannyo refused to dignify the transparent bit of instigation as she sat back down.

“They look good, don’t they? Make good tsukudani, too, but I say they’re better as-is.” Nemuno reached for a rice cracker and plucked one up between her fingers. She bit into the crisp round in an exaggerated manner to accentuate the crunch. “These ain’t bad. Not nearly as crunchy, though. Right, Sis?” she nudged Ubame.

“I appreciate the thought, but you really didn’t need to bring anything.” Ubame smoothly scooted the packet off the table and into her lap, signalling her wish to end the exchange there. Despite the cheer with which she spoke, something in her voice hitched. Nemuno grumbled but said nothing.

The table fell into a tense silence that was broken up by the droning cicadas and the now less pronounced sounds of Nemuno’s crunching. Neither Ubame nor Sannyo shared in the rice crackers, contenting themselves with sparing sips of tea, over which they watched their hag-sisters. A subtle pressure exerted itself from Ubame’s gaze upon Sannyo. There was the unspoken wish that the latter would speak with her other hag-sister. Sannyo’s silent response was to fold her hands in her lap and merely stare across at Nemuno, who had at length abandoned snacking to examine the pipe she’d recovered from the yard.

Watching her hag-sister’s fingers leaving smudges on the brass, Sannyo felt the prior ache in her temples surging back. She already regretted not retreating upstairs, yet there was a part of her that dearly wanted the pipe back in her hands. Her mouth felt parched in spite of the tea. She tried taking a deeper sip but found it wouldn’t sate the need she felt deeper than ever, if anything worsening it. A visciousness over her own self-deprivation rose up in the back of her throat, and that translated itself into a grinding irritation at Nemuno dirtying her pipe. She sat with her jaw set, feeling the world drawing tightly around her. At the edges of it all, Ubame was watching her once again, lips drawn into that thin, cautious line.

Ubame clapped her palms together lightly as if remembering something and scooted a little closer to Sannyo. “That right, you never told me how things are going. Did you make it through that spell of weather all right? Things looked rather nasty up there not that long ago. I heard one fairly large tengu building even came down because of it.”

“That’s pretty quick for news to reach here,” Sannyo muttered. The storms had been almost a week ago and the collapse a day or two after, yet those happenings may as well have been yesterday as far as the Sanctuary was concerned. Glaring up at Nemuno, she huffed through her nose at Ubame’s transparent nice-making.

“You ought to seen the wreckage, all the birds and dogs running everywhere. There was mud and wood and bricks all over the place. Heard some other places got buried underneath, too!” Nemuno reported to Ubame, speaking over Sannyo. She set the pipe down on the table with a loud clack that resonated within Sannyo’s mind like the crunch of breaking glass.

The tense smile that drew up around Ubame’s lips showed a certain strain on her patience. There would be a point when her caution would collapse, and she was doing what she could to paper over that inevitability. “I’m sure, dear, but I’m asking San. I’m hoping her establishment didn’t suffer too badly.”

“Establishment? Oh, her gambling hole.” Nemuno rolled her eyes, the last two words dripping with contempt. For what exactly would have been hard to say, but Sannyo doubted she had any true moral objections. “Even if it slid off the Mountain, why would she need to care? She’s got all her money to build a new one.”

“I don’t think things are that simple, Nemu dear. And it’s ‘hall’, not ‘hole’.”

“Thankfully,” Sannyo put in sharply, “the hall is fine. We did lose a few days of business. Everyone was so busy scrambling to deal with the clean-up that there was no appetite for amusement, I’d imagine. There were some appointments I couldn’t keep as well. I won’t lie; it’s troubled me. Not that any one thing would sink me immediately, but…”

“How about now? If you’re not there, that would mean more days closed, wouldn’t it? Will everything be all right?” Ubame pressed.

Just thinking on the subject drew a sigh from Sannyo, and she shrugged her shoulders and shook her head slowly. “It’s hard to say. I’d been thinking of closing for a time, anyway, so it’s been a windfall in some respects. Still, it’s a difficult thing to explain to some important clients of mine. I have honestly lost sleep knowing some may abandon me.”

“Oh, San.”

Sannyo looked up at Ubame, silently beseeching her not to pry any further. There were doors she was simply unprepared to open at the moment. There was a conflict in Ubame’s face between her sisterly instincts of concerning herself with her hag-sisters’ affairs and maintaining the carefully cultivated neutrality she’d maintained for a long time.

There was more crunching as Nemuno took another rice cracker, loudly chewing with her mouth open. “She ain’t wearing any makeup. Kind of looks like crap without it. Maybe that’d help? Probably what hooks ‘em in the first place.”

“Please, Nemu, San isn’t having the easiest time right now. Be a little nicer.”

“I’m just saying,” Nemuno balked, “if she’s so damn worried, maybe she doesn’t need to be here. Maybe she ought to be back out there doing… whatever it is she does.”

“If it were that simple, I don’t think she would be here. Let’s be kind to her, okay? There might be a little more to it, but we can’t press it out of her. In the meantime, I have no problem letting her stay around and take her mind off things. We’ll give her time.”

“Why are you doing that, Sis?” Nemuno was frowning hard at Ubame.

Ubame looked as if she’d been slapped. She took a breath as if prepared to employ sharp words, but she caught herself immediately. “Why am I doing what, exactly?” she replied with an evenness that made it clear she wouldn’t tolerate much more.

“Taking her side. Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing. You do this all the time.”

Before Ubame could say anything, Sannyo jumped in. “It’s called having some civility and minding your own business. You ought to try it sometime.”

“Who asked you for your stuck-up opinion, volcano?” Nemuno snapped, throwing out an old childish insult she’d used towards Sannyo years ago.

“Sorry, too indirect? Here, I’ll spell it out this time: Grow up. Nobody’s ever asked for you to come around to pick your little fights. You could always come back, but you treat it like everyone else’s problem. Well, I hate to inform you that it’s not.”

Ubame’s face reddened and her expression hardened instantly. “Don’t you start too,” she scolded Sannyo.

“Yeah, smoke-breath, butt out.”

“I don’t know why you tolerate her. It’s written on your face that you can’t stand her either. This is your territory, isn’t it?” Sannyo chided Ubame in return. Like a creature rising from the muck, something of the hidden fierceness of the mountain hag was beginning to stir in her blood. From the moment she’d sensed Nemuno coming, it had writhed beneath the surface like a restive serpent, desperate to erupt. However much Sannyo tried to erase it, it refused to vanish.

“Which means it’s my call what I do and don’t do, and I’ll ask that you honour that,” cautioned Ubame, keeping an even, matter-of-fact tone with Sannyo in spite of her clear irritation. She gripped at her skirt, perhaps feeling a sanguine resonance with her hag-sister.

“I think I honour it well enough,” Sannyo monotoned. She hugged herself, gripping her own sleeves tightly with hands that were beginning to tremble.

Nemuno half-stood, though she was held in place by Ubame seizing her arm. She jabbed a slender finger across the table. Her blood was evidently beginning to stir, too. “See? There’s that attitude, that stuck-up little attitude you always bring. How can you talk to Sis like that? After letting you into her own home I don’t know how many times! Have a little respect, you ingrate!”

“Respect! What do you even know about respect?” spat Sannyo in return. A horrible buzzing like the endless calls of the cicadas rang through her head, and she could feel her blood reaching a simmering point. Unhanding her sleeve, she flung her hand around, gesturing at the entirety of the room. “Look around. You’re looking at respect. You’re sitting on respect. What have you done besides continue to be a spoiled child?”

“Can the two of you please stop it, already? I just wanted everyone to remain civil.”

“What does ‘civil’ have to do with anything, Sis? I’m not going to sit here and take this overdecorated wannabe’s crap! She has the nerve to say I’ve done nothing for you! For you! And you want me to be in the same room as her as if nothing’s wrong? When she does this every time? Wake up, Sis, you’re taking her side!” Reaching under the table, Nemuno grabbed at the hidden satchet, throwing it onto the table. The disarrayed package tore open, scattering the tabletop with half-crushed cicadas. That was followed by a hail of rice crackers that battered Sannyo and inundated the floor with crumbs and pieces. Ubame’s mouth fell open and she stood aghast.

“Stop that right now. You’re going to apologise, and then you’re going to clean all this up,” Ubame growled at Nemuno after recovering from her shock.

“And there you have it. That’s exactly what you get when you give her any room.” Sannyo gestured at the mess of bug corpses and smashed rice crackers littering the room. Turning to Nemuno, she stabbed an accusatory finger through the air. “Years later, you’re just the same jealous little child you’ve always been. That’s why you’ve got to smear your dirty fingers all over my pipe; you can’t handle others living on their own terms. Nobody can ever have anything you don’t have!”

Further incensed, Nemuno picked the pipe back up and hurled it at Sannyo. The projectile missed, bounced off of a wall, and landed with a loud impact on the floor next to its owner. “You can shove all your dice and pipes and other bullshit! Hell, you can keep your house, too! I’m just fine with what I got! Problem is that you never could be!”

“If you could keep your jealousy under control, maybe you’d have found a way to avoid having to eat bugs and smelling like animal shit half the time.”

“Real funny how you can’t handle that, but you can run off chasing boars just fine!”

All at once, Sannyo’s blood surged to the point that she could barely hold on anymore, rocketing from a low murmur to a full-on bellow, her voice hitching and breaking. “How dare you. I said nothing that warranted that at all, you little bitch.”

Ubame rushed to Nemuno’s side, poised to shove her out the door. Her face was a deep red, and she bared her teeth at Nemuno like a mad wolf. This was her final warning before she struck. “Stop it right this second,” she choked out through clenched teeth.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I got it all wrong! You went chasing dogs and birds instead! And I guess you didn’t—”

Seizing Nemuno by the arm, Ubame pitched her hard onto the floor. Her voice had become beyond strained in her anger, sounding like a lute string stretched to its breaking point. “Nemu!”

A choked, enraged cry burst from the surprised Nemuno. She thrashed about on the floor to free herself, but Ubame was already atop her, powerful fingers grasping her hag-sister’s neck. They struggled on the floor as Sannyo looked on, transfixed.

The banks of the river that was her wild rage were threatening to spill over for Sannyo. From within, a voice like the snarl of some blood-soaked beast commanded her to pounce on Nemuno whilst she was vulnerable and exact terrible revenge. She stood up on shaking legs but couldn’t will herself to move. Her whole body trembled as she stood bewildered, locked in a struggle over what she was meant to do. The intensity of her blood’s stirrings had overtaken everything so suddenly, and now she couldn’t tell just what was driving her, the river surging well over its banks and washing away all sense. The bounds between herself and all else had become loosened. Little felt tangible to Sannyo in that moment. By chance, she grasped the pipe that had fallen at her feet.

All at once, she burst past her fighting hag-sisters and into the sweltering air of the outdoors. She forgot all decorum, ignored the need for shoes, and paid little heed to the dirt and debris that battered her clothes. Absent reason, only an unconscious draw to that spot near the well guided her, and she fell to her knees to catch sight of her bag once more, rifling through the contents in a frenzy. Frustration at her unsteady hands nearly inspired her to hurl it further than before, but she finally shook out the most precious of the cargo. In that moment, even covered in dirt, the silken pouch made Sannyo’s eyes tear over in relief. She clasped it to her breast like a protective amulet, rocking back and forth with words of thanks on her lips.

Struggle still sounded from over her shoulder. As if newly awakened, Sannyo ceased her panicked scrambling and focused all of her mind on her pipe. The finely shredded leaves had thankfully suffered no ill effects from lying outside, so they packed in with only minimal trouble from Sannyo’s uncoöperative fingers. The operation itself slowed the river’s flow until it returned to being little more than a quiet mountain stream. All that remained of the reverberations of her anger were drowned out under the full chorus of crying cicadas. The clear ringing of a windchime mingled with the cries and shouts, until one was indistinguishable from the other.

---

Incense-like coils of smoke from a mosquito coil wound about the house in a vain attempt to beat back the nightly encroachment of insects. The treetops offering little passage for moonlight, wavering candles provided the majority of the light following the sun’s flight. Ubame and Sannyo chilled their feet in tubs of water in an attempt to cool themselves. No one, save Nemuno, who lay curled in a sweaty ball apart from her hag-sisters, exhausted from her senseless thrashing, had any will or ability to sleep on account of the heat.

Mingled with the scent of the coil was the grassy, oddly mild smell of Sannyo’s pipe. With the doors all thrown wide, there was little room for Ubame to complain, though she did sit a bit closer to the sleeping Nemuno. Sannyo was of little mind to offer much comment on the matter and merely took her deep, leisurely puffs. Though she was far calmer now, there was still a trembling in her fingers now and again. When she’d exhausted one ball of tobacco, she tapped the pipe into her small ash-box and repeated the packing process carefully, sometimes asking assistance from Ubame when her fingers weren’t steady.

She might have normally been economical with her calming tobacco, but this was hardly a time to spare expense. In any case, the ever critical herb was a common one on the Mountain, and her shredded tobacco was far from a fine grade, so she hardly wanted for a steady supply. The blesséd satchet had been fully packed to start and wasn’t even close to half-empty.

Whatever disapproval Ubame felt, she didn’t let it show very clearly sitting next to Sannyo. Only once did she raise the reminder of Sannyo’s stated intentions to ‘cut back’ before summarily letting the matter drop. Even so, there was a lingering question in her otherwise calm face. Sannyo had chosen to disregard it and offer nothing even resembling an answer, and that fact did seem to draw silent rebuke from Ubame. Nevertheless, they shared in a sense that speaking on certain subjects would do little good. A look at Nemuno and her largely self-inflicted wounds satisfied them both on that score.

Pointing with her pipe to where Ubame’s discreetly applied powder had come off of her arm, leaving an exposed bruise, Sannyo affected an air of concern. “I could get you far better. One that won’t come off even trying to bathe an unruly cat,” she joked with a surreptitious glance at Nemuno.

“Well, now. I’d hoped you would let it alone.” Ubame moved to hide her arm, the blush on her face clear even in the dim light. “I forget to cover up one time and I swear I’m burnt black.”

“Come off it. You say that like it’s so terrible. I think you look great when you’ve tanned. Always have thought so.”

“You stop that. You’re not the one who has to see it in the mirror.”

Sannyo shrugged her shoulders and leaned back on one hand, kicking her feet in the open air. Despite the humidity, the night air on the Mountain invigorated her. Spotting a few phantoms streaking through overhead, she laughed to herself. “I was just thinking of the summers we spent when we were younger. When our mums talked about the stars, for a long time we thought they were talking about the phantoms,” she offered as an answer to Ubame’s inevitable prying look.

“Ah, I sort of remember, yes. They always did try to keep us under cover all the time. We all wanted to play under open sky and they’d get mad at us.” Ubame mirrored Sannyo in leaning back on her hands, though she kept her feet in the water. Glancing about, she allowed the clouds around her expression to part and ventured a self-mocking smile. “Funny how we grow up and change our minds.”

“We never really heard how it was for them. Not much, anyway,” Sannyo went on as if she couldn’t hear, unsure if she was being slighted. There was always room for doubt with Ubame. “And I’m not sure how much I could believe now. I sure didn’t believe much when I was a kid. It all sounded like faerie tales.”

“Well, some of us do take in strays.” Ubame’s smile widened a little glancing over at Nemuno, who mumbled and gurgled in her sleep.

Sannyo took a long, meditative draw from her pipe, letting the smoke settle deep into her lungs and holding it in silence for a while. The cicadas spoke up in their loud voices as if to fill in the gap. The subsequent exhalation manifested as a white cloud that erupted from her nostrils. Sure that she’d exhausted the current wad of tobacco, she tapped out the ashes with a loud clink that broke the silence.

“It’s weird to me how the others are so keen on being left alone,” she said as she was about to reïgnite the pipe. She caught a look from Ubame and waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t even need to tell me what they’re saying.”

“A downward-bound fish — as tasty and tempting as ever to the bear.”

“Yeah, yeah. Believe you me, I know. I also remember our mums saying much the same, but they still got together. You still remember how it was, don’t you? Feels unfair to you now, if you ask me.”

Ubame swept her hand through the dark curtain of her hair, letting it fall splayed wildly about her. Lifting her feet in the air, she silently held her pose. “What can be done? A shy child makes for a good watcher and invites less trouble,” she concluded, slapping her feet back in the water with an audible splash.

“Even watching, it seems to me like she invites enough trouble,” jibed Sannyo, blowing a puff of smoke in Nemuno’s direction. The sleeping hag pawed at her own face like a grooming cat and rolled closer to Ubame.

Shaking her head softly, Ubame pulled the supine Nemuno over the rest of the way and gently stroked her exposed belly. Nemuno practically purred at the attention, melting into her hag-sister’s lap. Though she hated to admit it, a quiet envy nipped at Sannyo as she looked on, feeling only truly accompanied by her pipe.

Lungful after lungful of the herbed tobacco had brought out its intended effects. Sannyo no longer felt her hand tremble and she felt more centered within herself. At the same time, there was a certain sense of the world growing far away from her. She was generally aware of Ubame pampering the hag-sister with whom she’d fought not hours prior, yet the scene somehow blurred as if caught in the fringes of her eyes. Many things about what she saw felt distant and without urgency. The empty expanse of the skies far over the treetops seemed to be inseparable from the rest of the darkness surrounding the house. Memory and reality mingled for Sannyo, until she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t being carried down a stream of her own recollection.

She bit down on the pipe’s metal endpiece. There was no fighting off the torrent. Dewy tears ran down her cheeks and came to rest amongst the summer perspiration on her skin. She didn’t even want to fight them; she welcomed them. A weight she had hardly noticed settling on her was beginning to lighten. Drop by drop, it was coming to pieces. She would carry it for some time, she was sure, but there was no denying the relief she felt at just that much. She set the pipe to rest on the ash-box after tapping out the newest ashes.

A hand cradling her cheek reminded Sannyo of Ubame’s presence. Ubame had managed to pull her closer until all three hag-sisters were pressed together. “And you think the two of you are so different.”

“No, I don’t,” Sannyo denied flatly.

Ubame pinched the flesh of Sannyo’s cheek between her fingers, making Sannyo flinch. “Both so difficult in so many of the same ways. It’s a wonder you get on so well.”

“Our mums did call me a spoiled one. I wonder whose fault that was.” Sannyo let herself lean on Ubame’s shoulder, resting her head in the crook.

“So spoiled it made others a bit jealous.”

Scents of the fields, the heat of the day, and the dry, acrid leaves of the bushes that grew around the house rose from Ubame. Not that Sannyo minded at all. Much the contrary, she drew deep of them. “Such an ugly little thing. Jealousy, I mean.”

“We yamanba are ugly creatures, even if most can’t see the ugliness.”

“Good thing I’m not one of those anymore,” Sannyo said with a laugh that didn’t lack its own acridness.

Things went quiet once more and remained that way for some time, the night air largely clear. Here and there, a firefly’s light flickered briefly. Crickets chirped as if hesitating to fully disturb the scene. The silence reverberated with unspoken words and cries yet unvoiced. After a moment, Sannyo felt Ubame’s shoulder shaking. She peered up but couldn’t see her hag-sister’s face clearly. Ubame suddenly looped an arm around Sannyo’s shoulder and squeezed her tightly.

“What?” Sannyo demanded. The sudden extreme adhesion between them pitched her from the lazy river of her thoughts and into the hot nocturnal air. Squirm though she might, she was the proverbial fish caught in the bear’s jaws.

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all,” managed Ubame through heavily suppressed laughter. She breathed a hard sigh having brought herself under control. “I just have to correct myself: You’re definitely the more difficult one.”

---

They had retired sometime in the pre-dawn hours, Ubame dragging the slumbering Nemuno under the mosquito netting with her and Sannyo retreating up the ladder. The effects of her pipe had allowed Sannyo to drift off without much difficulty, and she arose early in the morning with a certain lightness in her step and a mild appetite, much to Ubame’s surprise. Nemuno had not stuck around even for breakfast, it appeared.

“Disappointed?” Ubame joked, picking up immediately on Sannyo’s search for her hag-sister.

Sannyo scoffed before taking a sip of her tea. “Don’t be daft. I’m just a bit hungry for once and wanted to be sure nothing would spoil that.”

Ubame pattered back and forth conveying the rice tub and large bowls of soup to the table before settling in herself. Her hag-sister’s fare didn’t reflect any sort of richness within the season, falling back on preserved things, but Sannyo nevertheless felt a quiet gratitude for the steadiness of its flavour and filling character. She had been around for an autumn’s harvest and knew that the rewards for summer’s toil and deprivation weren’t to be taken lightly, so there was nothing for it but to look forward to that time.

Once they’d breakfasted, Sannyo got to the business that had ostensibly brought her into Ubame’s territory. She set about looking over the house, from the integrity of its foundations to the cleanliness of the doors. Ubame followed a step or two behind, helping see to what issues she and Sannyo could deal with together, occasionally defending her lacking maintenance in places with excuses. The whole ordeal realistically took little time overall, but Sannyo couldn’t help feeling a bit wearied by the end. She finally opted to set aside some less critical matters and didn’t press on the dirtied shouji or the conspicuously absent roof tile. The house itself would stand up to most potential issues until Sannyo’s next visit at the very least.

Finishing that bit of work then raised the question of what Sannyo would do now. Sannyo hestitated to answer at first, excusing herself to smoke once more as Ubame prepared tea. The smoke that had given her clarity in the evening only seemed to further entrench the question in her mind, burying it in a haze as she herself faded into a white, cloudy landscape. Certainly, there were others waiting for her back in civilisation and matters that needed attending. She had barely informed most of those concerned of her departure, leaving only a vague letter in her wake to be found by whoever came calling first. Some of those regular patrons at the gambling hall were likely disappointed. Maybe some of them had even sworn off gambling for a time out of annoyance at her. Perhaps, Sannyo thought, that would be the best case for those who could still be saved. Those who couldn’t…

Tapping out her ash and repacking her pipe, Sannyo found herself humming a tune that she at first couldn’t recall knowing, seemingly just a random assortment of notes that somehow emerged naturally. Only once she had taken a shallow draw of smoke did she hit upon the tune’s origin. She expelled smoke from her nose in her laughter. The clouds in the backdrop of her mind parted enough to allow an intense beam of aftenoon light through, Sannyo remembering herself sitting on the veranda. At length, amidst jokes from Ubame, she took to singing words she could recall from girlhood days. The jaunty song ill fit someone of her more refined leaning now, yet every melodic turn was so ingrained in her that she couldn’t stop herself. Swinging her legs from the veranda, Sannyo allowed herself to be taken up in the same song that Nemuno had been singing just the day before. At least, she felt, her own take was more musical and in-tune.

I rarely visit Hieda no Akyuu, but she’s received me every time I have. Today, however, I was stopped at the gate. It’s strange to find the doors closed to begin with, but the servant that greeted me said she wasn’t receiving visitors at all. For her to not let in guests is nothing short of unprecedented, but it was only more stunning when the servant then told me it had been that way for nearly a week. I nearly lost my hat pushing past her. She followed me for several halls after, fretting over Akyuu with the excuse that servants had no place to reproach their lady. It took much assuaging to beat her back– make her leave me be. She only relented when I told her she was in the way. Biting at a person doing their job isn’t my proudest moment, but I’ll have to apologize later.

For now, I find myself facing the doors to Akyuu’s office. There’s a hesitance stopping my hand from them. The worst she can do is yell at me to leave, I tell myself. She’s only so temperamental to people she truly despises, but there have been times that I’ve received her wrath, too. You wouldn’t expect it from the mild mannered girl that she is.

In those times it was the weight of the village on her shoulders, too heavy for her to bear. Perhaps that is what has taken her this time, as well. I accept this possibility and swallow my nerves, opening the sliding silk doors.

The sizable room is cast with sunlight from a window warming wooden floors. A record player sits adjacent to a wall of scrolls, not playing the screeching sounds of that… what does she call it? FM music? Doors out to the side hall, and further outside, beckon a glance to the courtyard, just dried from morning dew.

This serene, if not mundane, scene is broken by the strangest of sights.

A girl– no, a woman, garbed in a red hakama billowing into yellow sleeves, lies draped over her writing desk. Her bob of purple hair falls from her face, adherent more to gravity than its owner’s whims of staring into the ceiling. While I’ve seen her collapsed into her desk before, I cannot say I’ve witnessed her lie across the top as if it were her futon. I would worry that she were unconscious, or worse, if not for the subtle rise in her chest and a blink in her vacant purple eyes.

“What in the world are you doing?” I call to the girl, approaching the back of the room.

“Huh..?” she stirs from her stupor, rolling her face my way. “Ah!” she then gasps, eyes going wide. Rolling away from me, she collapses the short distance her shin high desk can hide her. It only takes me a few more steps to look over the wood, barren of any writing utensils or paper. She must be taking a break from writing her stories.

“If you’re that embarrassed to be seen then why do it?” I prick her absurdity.

She rounds her face up to me, retaliating, “I–! I was meditating! Don’t just barge in, Keine!”

I kneel in front of her desk, teasing, “Were you now? I would love to hear this new discovery of yours. Were you counting the planks in your ceiling or simply observing the dust dancing in the sunlight?”

“Shut up,” a weak complaint comes from her pout. “Who’s the one wearing that ridiculous bento box?!” she chastises, tossing a pillow from under her. My hat is knocked away as it bumps into me, but little else.

Akyuu squeaks, realizing what she had just done. I lean down to reclaim my ‘bento box.’ The square shape of the hat, while odd, does make it more durable than people suspect. I fluff the crowning feather from any bends or furls before donning the piece once more.

“Sorry, sorry,” I chuckle, “I didn’t need to tease you so much.” I’m glad she isn’t agitated, though that was a selfish hope. I clear the levity from my, and ask her, “You know why I’m here, yes?”

“You’re wondering why Lady Hieda hasn’t been receiving any audience. Honestly, I told the house that I wanted no one to visit.” She drops her childish pout, slipping into the more mature melancholy I saw moments ago.

“It was precisely because of that order that I’m here,” I inform her. “The person complaining failed to mention that you’d been this reclusive for a week, though. I can see why the servant at the gate was worried.”

“I imagine you shoved aside at least five more despite being told to leave.”

I turn a hand towards myself, jesting, “What sort of brute do you take me for? There was only one of them and I was effectively invited in for your wellbeing.”

Akyuu sighs, “I should remind them of the importance of security.”

“Don’t be too hard on them. I only wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Well…” she stalls, brandishing her person to me. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. Now please see yourself out. I’m sure there’s schoolwork for you to grade elsewhere, teacher.” Those words are cut in no uncertain terms. However, that only serves to make me further question her state of mind.

“I don’t believe you,” I tell her squarely. “You’re not fine.”

She simply blinks. “Do you tell your students how they feel, as well?”

“For the children that need a voice of reason, that duty may fall to me, yes,” I hold to my rigor with crossed arms.

“Then I’m no more than a child in your eyes. Comforting, in a way.” She leans back to one arm, resting her eyes to nowhere. That erstwhile spark of life leaves once more, leaving her as no more than a clay statue that once sat in place of a person.

Her humor’s outweighed by a foul mood. That won’t do. I move around the table, shuffling slowly as to not incite her glare. She turns her knees to me, nearly knocking into my own.

“You’re not like a child because of who you are,” I start, resting a finger on my cheek as I navigate my thoughts. “It’s more that… everyone are like children to me. Or, no, that isn’t right. What I mean is, I’ve known everyone in the village since they were children. Worrying about how they grow up feels no different than helping them as adults.”

Her iridescent eyes don’t seem to shine any more at the explanation. I press on, “That includes you, Akyuu. I’m not your mother, but I’ve known you since you were a child and you have me worried.” I take her hand in mine to goad her out of silence. “Now, please, what’s wrong?”

Her face flickers from one expression to another, in some sort of struggle with herself. “You may understand. May,” she asserts with a shake of her hand. Another pause silences the room, the distant sound of servants and people going about their daily lives trailing through the air. She brings the heel of her hand to her mouth as she shies away, admitting, “This is more embarrassing than I thought.”

“Take your time,” I encourage with a smile.

Her collar shrinks up to her chin at the prospect. “It’s… uh…” she fails to find the words. Normally I’d tease her for such a thing given the amount of writing she does both for duties and hobbies, but now isn’t the time.

She takes in a sharp breath to force the words out from her lungs, “I–… think I’ve been alive longer than I should be.”

“Oh,” I fail to contain some surprise at the idea. “What?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand…” the raspy sound of a deflating voice accompanies her head drooping to the side.

I wave her worry away, contesting, “No, no, no. I want to understand. It’s just… forgive me if this is rude, but isn’t living longer than you expect a good thing?” I lean down to meet her eyes, where she avoids my stare with uncertainty drawing her lips in several directions.

“I mean, it is,” she passes off the platitude she knows to be objectively true, but the subjective part is what’s clinging to her like a vengeful spirit. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me, after all.”

“There’s no shame in talking about it. You can always find the words as you go along, after all,” I propose.

Her lips shrink, and she rubs the back of her hand nervously, but eventually nods, accepting, “Yes, that’s also true. But where to start..?” Her eyes wander around the room for inspiration. She settles on the scrolls, and points to some by the edge. “There’s the paperwork for my reincarnation ritual, signed by the Enma. Below it are my manuscripts for the Gensokyo Chronicle. My contributions, I mean.”

“That’s something. But is that what’s really tormenting you? Nothing more recent?”

“Well… my thirty first birthday recently passed.”

“That was several months ago, Akyuu,” I chide. “We’re nearly as close to your next birthday.”

“I guess that’s when I started pondering it,” she picks up, tapping at the desk beside her. “Since the day I was born, I’ve been told that I shouldn’t think about living past thirty.”

“Your previous incarnation lived to thirty five,” I remind her of something she knows by heart. She’s the one most aware of the waning years of her repeated lives.

“And yet…” she trails off looking at me to finish the thought.

I sniff, amused that she’d be so coaxing even when depressed. “Now you’re thirty one. No one predicts the future.”

“But the preparations for my next reincarnation are already finished,” she notes. “And I completed my additions to the Gensokyo Chronicle years and years ago. I may write as a hobby, but I truly have so much free time that I can’t use it all.”

I can feel a strand of hair drift from my collar as I tilt my head in thought. Her words don’t sound so distraught, but she’s keen to read into the little details. So what little detail becomes apparent if Akyuu stays alive for a while?

She clutches herself, turning her torso away from me in mock indecency. “I can feel you dressing me down, Keine,” she complains. “I am not something to be gawked at, I am someone with a confounding melancholia.”

I curl a finger over my lips, ignoring her jest in favor of keeping on topic. “Are you worried about your next incarnation?” I speculate, doing my best to really weed into her head.

“What? Of course not,” she voices with confidence, only to be followed by an aversion from my gaze.

“So the fact that every day you live will delay your next life has absolutely no bearing on your current predicament?” I spell out for her.

She remains silent for a moment, propping her upper lip with the lower in thought. “It… may be a small part of it. There’s a lot of uncertainties I’m facing right now.”

“Rest assured, she isn’t looking forward to inheriting your duties any more than you were.”

“Alright… then what of Higan?” she switches subject. “Surely they will begin to wonder what keeps me here.”

The court of the afterlife may be who keeps her after death, but for them to be waiting? I think of the judge left in charge of our realm, coming to complain that Akyuu is enjoying her life in the village too much. She would lecture us on the importance of Akyuu dying as soon as possible. I chuckle to myself at the absurdity of the thought, “I doubt the Enma is waiting for you more than anyone else.”

“She is missing on a century of service in her court, then,” Akyuu seems to take offense.

“I imagine that she’d tell you to live your life for however much is left. Cherish the time you have.”

She hangs her head low, and sighs, “That’s probably what I’ve been having the most trouble doing, lately. This modern state of a peaceful Gensokyo, where I casually speak with Youkai that can kill me with a cough, has left me with introspections I can’t dull. I’m unsure what I’m able to do to make my life worth living.”

There’s an irony to that which doesn’t fall upon deaf ears. “I suppose that means you’re much like the villagers we work so hard with. People aren’t usually born with a purpose, after all,” I contend.

She gives in to silence. We both know that she was born with a purpose, but now that purpose has been accomplished, to be done again in a time far from now. Doesn’t that mean she can choose her own purpose until she should greet the shinigami of the Sanzu? There must have been no place for it in her ruminations, yet.

I idly glance off to the side, into the yard. A flat bench overlooking a small pond framed by rocks sits in the sunlight, calling back to the memories of conversations I’ve had there. Akyuu excuses it as a bit of nature outside her doors, but in truth treats it as no more than a place to take guests when she’s tired of her tearoom.

An intuition guides me to comment, “Say, I feel the sun inviting us. Why don’t we follow it?”

As I get up, coaxing Akyuu to her feet as well, the woman groans, “Please, Keine, I am not so far gone as to be unable to walk on my own.” She presses my hands back to me, walking into the open yard towards a bench. She trots across a few flat stones, resting on the open plank seat with the proudest view of a large headstone.

I follow her lead, taking the same path of stones to avoid dirtying my socks, and taking the space on the other end of the bench. The pond is disturbed by the lightest of breezes, shooting indiscriminate specks of sunlight our way. A kind spring atmosphere blankets us.

“Mm, this is a beautiful day, indeed,” she muses with a lengthy stare into the water. A few seconds pass where she seems almost content to do nothing else, but she breaks the sounds of leaves rustling with a tap on the space between us. “Though, this feels like we’re missing something, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed it does,” I reciprocate. I stop her as she circles a hand to call for the nearest servant, “Wait a moment, I have something I wish to look into.” I stand from the bench as she gives me a curious eye. I assure her, “I may be a bit, but I’ll be back with tea.”

I set to work, finding my way to a seldom used corner of the mansion, and with a bit of knowledge scant few are privy to, I lift a floorboard that was once loose. It is now nailed to the supporting wood, doubtless the work of a servant who never investigated the oddity, but it does little to stop me from clawing it out along with the board. I reach below into a blind space to find a bundle of long forgotten artifacts carefully bundled in a turquoise blanket. Satisfied with my find, or more importantly that nothing within has broken in the several centuries since being hidden, I conscript a few servants to help with the rest of the preparations. I return to Akyuu, almost hunched over her knees in sleep induced boredom, and set down a tea set.

She jumps to life, staring at the fruits of my labor in confusion. “That was some time to make tea. My people didn’t give you grief, did they?” she wonders after my delay, a bit quick to judge her people more than my meandering.

I gesture to the set and affirm, “They were very helpful, if somewhat confused where I acquired this tea set. It isn’t a part of your collection, after all.”

She looks down at the set. A smooth turquoise pair of cups and dotted dark iron pot rest on the tray. She tilts her head as she inspects one of the cups. It sits in her spindly fingers, dwarfing their size by a noticeable amount. “If it’s not of my collection, then where did you come upon it?” she asks, bringing the cup to eye level. The smooth material glints back, its precise craftsmanship rivaling what a kappa may produce if they were so inclined. “It looks familiar, somehow.”

I raise a finger to my lips, and look about for any witnesses before letting her in on my secret, “This is the tea set prized by Amu.”

“What?” she breathlessly gapes. “You mean Hieda no Amu, one of my ancestors?”

“Of course. She was someone who prized tea ceremony, inviting nobles from across the country to participate in her love of the craft,” I explain, pouring the contents of the pot. I lift the cup and turn it, as commonly done for the event. “She may have been an unusual participant, often chastised by said nobles for the favoring of cups over bowls, but her love for it eventually softened them up.”

Akyuu stares down at her cup as I sip mine, admitting, “I didn’t know that.”

I hide how much the boiling hot drink scalds my throat with a smile, choking out, “Luckily for you, you know someone that knows a lot about history.”

“I thought you only knew about the history of Gensokyo?”

“And just who do you think is so important to Gensokyo’s history outside of its makers?” I chide.

Her eyes release from mine, looking down to her cup. She takes it, mirroring my motion, and takes a sip. “It’s much too hot.” She gives the tea a furrowed brow.

“Well, we certainly aren’t as appreciative of the art as she was,” I note. “We’re not conducting any real ceremony at all. I simply thought we should use this set in honor of her.”

Akyuu attempts another sip, once more complaining of the temperature before wondering, “Where did you actually find this, in that case?”

“It was hidden within your home,” I chuckle. “Would you like to guess as to why?”

She examines her cup once more, pondering it for the answer. “What year was Amu born?”

“Sixteen fifty one,” I reply. “Much after the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate.”

“So then… was she worried about bandits..?” she cups her chin while continuing to inspect the teacup.

“We may never know,” I muse. “She never wrote down her true reason. It does make for an excellent conversation starter, though, doesn’t it?”

Akyuu pops a brow at my riddling. “A conversation starter, is it? What point are you trying to make?” She sets the cup down, unsatisfied by my handiwork, though I don’t dare to give her grief for my lack of exercise in brewing.

“Humor me, I’m hoping it’ll help.”

She rolls her eyes, though the smile below tells me it’s not out of annoyance or frustration.

I point across the pond to the large, headstone shaped rock that accents the formation. “Do you know the story behind that rock?”

She glances at it for only the briefest moment before informing me, “It was a gift from the Enma of the time to Hieda no Ami. A show of good will. I have a close record of it, like most things in the estate, and when they were received.”

“Ah, but you don’t know the reason why it was gifted,” I pontificate.

Akyuu gives me a narrow pair of eyes, refusing to comment further on the matter. I don’t think she realizes the reasons people tease her so often.

I continue as if she gave me verbal permission to do so, “The story is actually quite involved, but I’ll leave it as more of a summary. I’m sure all of your past incarnations had messy feelings about the impermanence of life, but none felt so anxious as poor Ami.”

“Even if you think about my feelings right now?” Akyuu challenges, competing for an undesirable title. “Isn’t that why we’re talking about this to begin with?”

“Of course. Your fears are existential. Ami’s were unfounded, though I can’t fault her for having them.”

“You’ve lost me,” Akyuu bemoans, shaking her head.

I giggle, a benefit allotted for such ancient stories, “Ami was so scared the Enma would come for her in her sleep that she couldn’t spend a night alone until she was fifteen.”

Akyuu leans back with a tilted gaze, admonishing, “You shouldn’t embellish so often, Keine, it’ll put a bad reputation for both of us.” She adds an extra head shake, repeating the word, “Fifteen. Honestly.”

I grin creeps a little further up my face as I claim, “It’s true. The head servant even had a designated bed in the lady’s room. It had been that way for so long that the same servant had to contact someone about the problem.”

“Oh really? Who might that be?” Akyuu snorts, clearly still considering my story no more than a wives’ tale.

“Miss Yakumo–“ I start, receiving a ghastly stare, but press on, “is who sent word to the court of Higan. The very next day one of the Ten Kings themselves arrived at the gate. I still don’t believe my visions do justice to the way that grizzled old judge tried to comfort a teenage girl. He used so much formality, with contractual obligations and the duty of the Hieda lineage. Oh he was so stiff, the poor girl was no more than a frightened rabbit. As he left, he produced that stone there,” I point at the rock once more, getting up and pacing around the pond’s edge.

I wave Akyuu over to the side of the rock. She complies, walking the other side of the water in her socks. I bend over and point to the bottom corner, directing, “See these characters? They’re faded after the near millennia it’s been here, but you can barely make out the month and year.”

She squints at the corner of the rock, placing a finger to level her gaze and guessing, “Natsu, Genryaku. End of the Heian period. That… does put Ami at about fifteen, doesn’t it?” She looks up to the rest of the rock, tracing her fingers across particular grooves that suggest a carved symbol along the face. “And what is this?”

“The Kaisho script of that Enma’s name,” I confirm, lowering to the grass as I end my story. “Comically, the Enma frightened Ami by leaving this stone. It was so effective that she considered it a declaration that the bull of a man would come back for her in short time. It lasted for about a month until she realized the misunderstanding,” I chuckle, knowing the girl would eventually laugh about it with that head servant in the decades following.

Akyuu, still staring at the script from her knees, looks to me, and wonders, “Is this your way of trying to say people care for me like others did in my past lives? You’re being awfully indirect about it.”

“Am I?” I chew on the point, scratching at my chin. “Well, let’s say I simply wished to ramble about things you may never have known. Though, there is one more tale I wish to divulge, if I may.”

“Keine, please don’t be so formal. I’m not going to kick you out for being the history buff you are,” she gripes. “Just… don’t be eccentric without telling me ahead of time.”

“Something mundane, then,” I agree. Taking a second to organize my words more to her liking, I relinquish my hat, handing it across the front of the rock.

She takes it, giving it all the care of holding a child as she remembers my grief when the prior piece broke. “The next story is about your hat?” she doesn’t bother to hide her bafflement.

“Yes,” I simply reply, gesturing to the head-topper in question. “I don’t believe I’ve ever told you where this lovely fashion statement comes from nor what it represents.”

She shuts her eyes and puffs out her nose, an admittance that she can’t stop me regardless of what she says. The chance for a parting shot is still too tempting for her, as she joylessly remarks, “So, where does your fashion statement come from?”

I open the discussion, “I received it from Hieda no Aya.”

Now Akyuu is invested. Her hair angles with her head as she recalls, “I knew the Hieda residence had ties to you before me, but were you and Aya that close of friends? So little of her life is recorded for me, despite her importance.”

“We could say the same for a lot of your predecessors,” I pose to the girl, not known to keep any sort of journal or diary herself. “As for Aya… our relationship was complicated.”

“’Complicated?’” Akyuu repeats, her mouth agape in disgust.

“Not like that, you moron! I respected her!” I scold. “She was a very headstrong woman, as she had to be for the village when the barrier first formed. The incidents of today are but minor inconveniences compared to the problems we faced then.”

“I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about it,” Akyuu gives an apology in her smallest voice, hiding behind my hat from the outburst.

I take a deep breath and compose myself, bowing my torso and returning the apology, “No, I’m the one that’s sorry. No one ever told you anything about Aya, but I should have been the one to do so, in retrospect.”

She raises a hand for me to cease prostrating. “So you were that close, but not romantically,” Akyuu corrects herself.

A smile appears on my face before I can manifest the thought to put it there. “If I’m being honest, there was a sense of love, at least from me, but I would claim it to be familial. A bit strange to say aloud to effectively the same person. You both look identical, if that weren’t enough.”

“I suppose she did only live to a few years more than I,” she adds the morose reminder more for herself than I.

“But what’s important is what she did in that time!” I fight Akyuu’s worries with as much spirit as I can muster. “My power came shortly after the barrier, and exile with it. I returned to the village only due to Aya’s influence and strong sense of duty to her fellow man. Without her I may well not be considered human. I’d be living in seclusion.”

“How long did you know her for?” she questions, slipping into more common habits.

I comply with her curiosity, “Probably since I was a child. Even for me, such a memory is foggy. What I remember for certain is that I’d known her for years. I was one of the few beside her bed, in the end. She had been confined there for months, but never once complained. She just wanted to help others in her every waking moment.”

“Wha-? Keine, please take a moment,” Akyuu frets, reaching out to me.

I can feel moisture in my eyes threatening to spill from the corners.

I wipe away the bothersome features and choke back any excess emotion before continuing, “What I mean to say is that she was a very important friend of mine. With how young I was we felt as close as sisters.” I stop for a moment, noticing that Akyuu looks more distant than a moment prior. “Sorry, did that make things awkward?”

She snaps back to the present, having to stop both of her hands from flailing my hat around as she concedes, “No, no! I was simply thinking about the people that I know. I wonder if any of them would think of me with such praises.”

“I can assure you there are,” I state without giving away too much lest it be boasted. “But more to the point of my cap–”

“Yes, why did Aya gift you such a thing?” Akyuu shows no reservation in questioning the tastes of a past life.

“During one of our many conversations she noted how I had taken after her in the years since we met. I had no reason to decline the accusation, but I don’t think she ever looked more flushed than that moment. In covering for her embarrassment she joked that I was more sagacious than she could ever feign the identity of, enough that I should live in a pagoda.”

“Would that make you a holy relic? Or maybe you’d turn into a Buddha with enough time?” Akyuu adds similar playful remarks as her past self did.

I chuckle at the likely coincidence, and insist, “It was no insult to me. We wanted to be as hardy as possible for the village we cared about.”

“And so the hat was from that conversation?” Akyuu surmises.

“A few days after the conversation, Aya presented me this– or rather, the original– hat. ‘With this you’ll always be the village’s treasured pagoda,’ she said. With another joke about how she couldn’t make it three storied, of course.”

“Of course,” Akyuu’s smug grin almost seems to repeat the words on its own. “But that is certainly the most I’ve ever learned about my ancestors in one go. Not writing our personal opinions and beliefs seems to be a bad habit. One I’ve inherited, so, thank you, Keine,” she appends, handing my hat back with a wistful look. I’ve at least taken her mind off of earlier woes.

I return the silly little pagoda to it’s rightful perch, that bit of Akyuu’s melancholy afflicting me. Maybe due to my trip down memory lane, or maybe due to the subject matter itself, I find a moment of weakness in my shell, and say, “Akyuu, you should know that I do miss her dearly. But I’d also–“

She stops me with a flap of her hand, shying away from the threat of such spongy feelings. “Yes, yes, I can already guess what you’re going to say. No need to make both of us cry, you know.”

I pause for a moment, the wind, the sound of our crowded village, filling our ears. “Can I say them anyway?” I propose just over the noise.

Akyuu takes a moment to really think, crossing her arms and pinching her lips. “… Sure,” she allows, though it was clearly on a hung jury.

I stand from the grass and clear my throat, orating like a lecture we once held together, “I’ll miss you when you’re gone, Akyuu. Miss your books. Miss the classes we taught together in my temple school gifted by your past life. I’ll miss how you get so wrapped up in the lives of the Youkai you could talk to like humans. I’ll even miss your taste in otherworldly music, more akin to something out of the kappa’s factories… No offense, I may just be too old to understand.”

She stands as well, patting the headstone in recognition, and fires up, “I think it may still be too early for Gensokyo as a whole to appreciate my refined tastes, but that’s something I can work towards. I’m starting with you, I hope you know.” She turns, attempting to hide any emotions my little elegy spurred, but I can see her slide an arm to her face.

“There will be plenty of chances to add others to your esteemed club, my lady,” I giggle.

We head back to her office, fetching records for her player to fill the sounds of the afternoon. I still don’t like the music, but maybe I’ll learn to appreciate it. While Akyuu’s still here, and when she comes again.

I am Yuiman, the god enshrined in Asama Purifying Mountain. My role is to process and purify the world's information for the nobles atop magnificence. Recently a big data surge overwhelmed me and I was in danger of losing my mind, but a shrine maiden named Reimu came along, beat me up, and fixed everything. I'm sure that was an interesting story, probably about six chapters long with lots of intense action and quirky lovable characters, but the information overload corrupted my short-term memory, and I can't remember the details. I can tell you all about what happened when the second shrine maiden came two weeks later, though.

---

I was in the center of my Zoltaxian Labyrinth as usual, sitting in my beautiful Pit of Four Seasons, inspecting the data Asama pulled in.

Growing up in a Belgian-Paraguayan household, this cassava waffle recipe was a beloved treat reserved for special occasions. I remember my grandmother-
Post "gm" in this thread the first time you log on every day! gm gm gm gm gm gm gm gm gm rise and shine USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST-
Kohei Arihara: 4.2 IP, 6 H, 3 BB, 3 K, 2 ER. Darwinzon Hernandez: 0.1 IP, 1 H, 1 K. Haru Matsumoto: 2 IP, 1 H. Kouya Fujii: 1 IP, 1 K. Yuki-

Raw life information like this is full of rough edges, impurity, and fiction. The blessing of my shrine is to take this crude raw data and make it into eternal truth. When I see a stream come in that's tainted with life information, I pick it out and feed it to my pet white snake, Sabu, who digests it until all that's left is safe, pure, sanitized input. It's important to the nobles that nothing that could disturb their capital's eternal peace gets through.

When the data flow started ramping up, there were so many bizarre hallucinations to deal with that poor Sabu wound up overeating and he gave himself a stomachache. I was glad to see him chowing down in good spirits now. I was in pretty good spirits myself. With the disturbance over, I had settled back into my comfortable data-monitoring routine.

It's no exaggeration to say the upcoming election is the most important of all time. Whatever your political affiliation, it's your duty as a citizen-
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"Yuiman? Yuiman Asama? Shout if you can hear me! I've come to get you out of here!"

The girl's voice might have been confused for just another hallucination, but there's a saying they have, in a place I've never been to: "fool me once, won't get fooled again". I've lived by those words of wisdom ever since I fed them to Sabu. Even if a human had only come down here once in a thousand years, I was going to be ready for the next one.

"Hello? Where are you, Yuiman? Agh, more of those pyramiddy kiddies!" From the sounds of it, an unauthorized being had encountered the floating pyramidal stones that make up Asama's security system. There was the sound of a wild flurry of danmaku, and then a green-haired girl in a blue shrine maiden outfit flew down. She had a cute hair ornament in the shape of a white snake (not as cute as my Sabu) and a goofy-looking frog hairclip. A couple of security stones floated in after, eyeing her suspiciously.

"Yuiman?" The girl struck a heroic pose. "I'm here to rescue you!"

If this was a real human, it would be polite to address her directly. "Are you a hallucination?"

*She's asking if I'm a hallucination. Definitely the weirdo Lady Kanako was talking about.*

"Aren't you the weird one here? It's weird for a real human to enter the pyramid, and it's especially weird for you to rescue me when I'm not in any distress."

"Oops, did I say that out loud? Ahaha, don't mind me..." She shook her head to reboot. "My name's Sanae, I'm here to rescue you from the Lunarians! They're the ones who trapped you in this prison, right?"

"Does this look like a prison to you? This wonderful Pit of Four Seasons." I gestured to the north wall, where an ice storm had just passed through, leaving the landscape glittering in the sun.

"Oh, that's pretty."

"Pretty isn't the half of it!" I won't let anyone look down on my pride and joy. "This place is modeled after the famous Gate of Four Seasons from Yuiman Kingdom, you know. The nobles of the capital built it to show all the best naturescapes from every time of year."

"But I've come to take you out of here! You can actually go out into nature now, rather than watch boring imitations of it on the wall."

"No, that's the genius of it! If you get bored watching one season, you just turn ninety degrees and it's three months later on the next wall. You keep doing that, and by the time you turn a full circle, the first season is fresh again. It's a cycle of renewal, a wheel of time that constantly turns. The whole world is in this chamber."

"I see what's going on."

"Do you want to watch the seasons with me for a while?"

"Lady Kanako said the Lunarians had brainwashed you. There must be hypnotic patterns in those seasonal images. Don't worry!" She raised her purification rod and tried not to look at the walls. "I'll snap you out of it by force if I have to!"

Real humans were more violent than I remembered. Or maybe it was just shrine maidens. "Come on then! I'll show you the might of a princess of Yuiman Kingdom!"

---

I don't like to brag, but I'm very skilled with projectile weapons. Back in Yuiman Kingdom they called me the "Demon of Deer-Hunting" for my lethal accuracy. On top of that, Asama Purifying Mountain is a shrine that belongs to me, it's my home turf where my divinity is strongest. And on top of that, Asama brings in all sorts of jagged, hostile data I can use as a weapon.

You might ask, with all these advantages, how did I lose to Reimu earlier? That would be sort of rude of you to ask. Honestly, you've got to learn to let some things slide, you know? I already told you I don't remember the details, but I bet I thought I was just dealing with yet another fictional person and I didn't use my full power until it was too late. Against Sanae I went hard from the start. She was no pushover, she sent spiritual snakes that chased me wherever I dodged, and laid down fields of fire with exploding frog artillery to keep me on my toes. But I hemmed her in with an endless stream of garbage data, and once her freedom of movement had been taken away, I loosed an arrow for the finish. It knocked the wind out of her and sent her sprawling on the floor.

"Sheesh," Sanae said, when she'd recovered enough to talk, "if you don't want to come that badly, I'm not gonna kidnap you or anything. Lady Kanako said you were an old friend of hers and the Lunarians were keeping you locked up in here, so she sent me to help you. I think she'd really like to see you again."

An old friend, Kanako. I trawled the depths of my memories, my life in Yuiman Kingdom those millennia ago...

---

I met her the day after a violent rainstorm, one of those tree-smashing squalls that come in the early spring. I was walking the boundaries of the kingdom with my entourage, inspecting the damage to the roads, when she presented herself boldly before me. A small woman with messy purple hair, barefoot and spattered with mud, clothing that had once been fine now dirty and tattered. But underneath her untidy appearance, she had a core of divine dignity I couldn't look away from.

"I have come to petition this country for refuge. Take me to your ruler."

It was a command to a foreign princess, made with total confidence it would be obeyed. She wasn't wrong! We stopped our road patrol right away and took her to tell my father her story.

She used a lot of high-class words and fancy grammar that made my father's wooden audience hall seem shabby by comparison, but the basic facts were like this. She was the eldest daughter of a proud family of Yamato gods. Her younger brother had betrayed her in an attempt to monopolize the local faith for himself, and she'd had to escape in a hurry. She'd fled out of Yamato lands to the border of the land of the dead, to Yuiman Kingdom, where she'd be out of reach. She had all sorts of plans for the betterment of our kingdom if we agreed to shelter her, starting with that recent trend that was all the rage in Japan, agriculture. Our soil was very fertile, she said, and if we plowed and planted it properly, with her blessing as a weather goddess, it could yield a bounty several times what we were getting simply hunting deer and foraging tubers.

My father wanted to turn her away from the very beginning. Yuiman was a kingdom of demigods, its people sustained themselves from their own faith, and it wasn't easy to spare any. And this was before the Yamato really got big; at that point they didn't rule all of Japan, they were just another squabbling tribe with big dreams. It would have been smarter not to get caught up with an expansionist tribe like the Yamato. Yuiman was doing just fine without their new-fangled ideas. But I couldn't help it. I'd been caught up since the moment I looked in Kanako's eyes.

---

Sanae was staring at me.

"Ah... You mean Kanako Yasaka?" I said lamely.

"Yep, that's her. Lady Kanako told me to bust you out right away and bring you back to the Moriya Shrine. She wants to share a drink with you to greet the summer."

If I wanted to greet the summer all I had to do was face the south wall. "I don't know, I've got a lot of work to do..."

Sanae smiled a saleslady smile. "Between you and me, the Moriya Shrine has a lot of pull in Gensokyo. As far as Shinto is concerned we're the clear number one, we're a great friend for a newcomer god to have. If you play your cards right with Lady Kanako you could instantly be on the fast track to be one of Gensokyo's big shots."

A security stone flew up to me and started tugging on my arm, pulling me toward the exit.

"See, that kiddy thinks you should come. Look, Lady Kanako honestly was worried about you. At least come have a quick drink to put her mind at ease?"

It's not like I didn't want to see Kanako again. The way it ended those centuries ago was like a missing right parenthesis. I wanted to hear what she had to say for herself. And it's not like I was actually a prisoner of the nobles. I could leave any time I decided to, right? Just a little time away would be fine, right?

The security stone twisted in the air as we left. I might have been reading too much into five rotating vertices, but I think it was waving goodbye and telling me to enjoy myself.

---

One of the great things about my Pit of Four Seasons is that you can enjoy bright and joyful summer days without the oppressive heat. I was sweating as we flew up the mountain, and remembering the sweaty work of clearing the ground in Yuiman Kingdom for planting together with Kanako. We spent some sweaty nights, too. At this point, I've seen life information with every possible permutation of body parts interlocking in every configuration, but back then, the idea of two girls being together was a whole new world. I'll leave the details of those nights to your hallucination.

It's not that I was hoping to go back to those passionate times. You can only lose your innocence once. I was in a different place now, and surely she was too. But I wouldn't mind sneaking just a taste of sweet memory, you know?

I'd had the whole flight to think about what I'd say when I saw Kanako again, how to talk to her after everything that happened. I wasn't any closer to figuring it out by the time we landed.

"Yuiman!" There she was coming down the steps of the main shrine building. Sometimes gods change over time, they syncretize or transform to fit the changing beliefs of humanity. But of course Kanako's sense of self was too strong for that. She was still the same Kanako. But behind her was a...

"Kanako! It's so good to see you again! Why are you carrying around a giant shimenawa?"

Shimenawa are binding ropes made of femtofiber fabric that the nobles atop magnificence use to bind rebellious gods. So many gods were sealed away like this that the humans misunderstood and started treating the shimenawa itself as a symbol of divinity. There are a lot of replica shimenawa out there made by humans out of rope and invested with their faith, but I could tell at a glance the rope circle framing Kanako's form was the original type. Something about the idea of a rope to bind away gods was bothering me, tugging at my memories...

Kanako gave a sideways smile. "Still the same old Yuiman. After all these years, everything they did to you, you still jump right to the point. Sanae, why don't you get my old friend something to drink? And some pickles or something to snack on."

Sanae took my drink order and hurried off, leaving the two of us alone. There was an awkward pause while I waited for her to explain the shimenawa. No explanation came.

It was up to me to break the silence. "It seems like you've got a nice place here," I offered, "and a good reverent shrine maiden."

"Oh, Sanae's great," Kanako smiled. "So hardworking. No matter how many tries it took, she wouldn't give up until she'd broken you out. Did you know, she's not just a shrine maiden, she's also a god in her own right? Human and god, just like you."

Just like me, huh. Was she going to take better care of this one? "That's nice."

There was another awkward pause.

"You know, fate moves in mysterious ways," Kanako said. "I never figured I'd see you again. To think you came to Gensokyo before I did!"

"I came to Gensokyo before Gensokyo did, even."

"Maybe you don't know," Kanako drew herself up to dispense wisdom, "but it's gotten tough to be a god in the Outside World. Out there, every phenomenon is characterized and catalogued by science now. Even though not one person in ten could give a scientific explanation for the wind and the rain, the other nine still put their faith in a meteorologist rather than asking for my blessings. "

Hence why she ran away to Gensokyo, I guess. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I get a sample of Outside World information passing through my mountain, I've seen the share of prayers and sutras drop as the share of ads and algorithms goes up. But I have my shrine in Asama to sustain me. I'm not worried." Honestly, I think the advertisements are cute. They're so enthusiastic about those products! Sutras are a little repetitive.

Kanako frowned. "You don't have to stay in Asama, though. Gensokyo's an exception to the rule. The people here haven't forgotten the faith of their hearts. Plus, the youkai here put their faith in gods too. There's plenty of ways to get faith without relying on the Lunarian-"

"I'm sorry, Lady Kanako! She insisted on coming with!" Sanae had returned, bringing sake, snacks, and a short blond-haired girl in a purple dress. The girl was wearing an oversized straw hat, and on top of the hat were a pair of eyeballs the size of my fists. I stared at them. They stared at me.

"There's no way I would pass up a chance to meet Kanako's old flame," the girl snickered. "I've heard a lot about you, Yuiman. I'm Suwako, the other god of this shrine."

"I was hoping to spring you on her as a surprise when I gave her the grand tour," Kanako said. "But fine. Suwako, this is Yuiman, my old friend. Yuiman, this is Suwako, my new partner. Technically, the shrine belongs to me, but the three of us run it together."

"Yeah, you're so gracious letting me stay in the shrine you took from me," Suwako laughed. "Sanae, pour the sake. Let's give this girl a proper Gensokyo welcome."

---

I don't drink on the job, and I'd been on the job for a thousand years. I soaked up the sacred sake like a tardigrade returning to life, and the tension dissolved in the alcohol. Sanae kept our sake dishes full and soon me, my old friend, and her new friend were all tipsy and laughing together. Kanako made grand boasts about giant robots, flying treasure ships, and birds with built-in fusion reactors. Suwako used well-timed sarcasm to puncture her ego, they were like a practiced manzai duo. Sanae had kept sober, and she was able to give me a running account of what had actually happened. These stories were exactly the sort of lively data I ordinarily had to screen out, but today I could just sit and enjoy.

"So what about you?" Suwako asked. "We never get to hear anything about the sanctuary. The yamanba like their secrets and the monkeys aren't good conversationalists. What's life like in there? Got any stories?"

"Eh, I don't know," I admitted. "I just stay in my shrine. You remember when I showed you the Gate of Four Seasons, Kanako? Back in Yuiman Kingdom? Asama has a Pit of Four Seasons that shows that exact same scenery projected on the walls. So there's no need for me to ever go out. I don't have my own stories; other people's stories flow into the pyramid, and I clean them up for the nobles atop magnificence."

That struck an immediate sour note with the three Moriya gods. They all started talking over each other, but I'm very good at dealing with overlapping jumbled up data streams.

Sanae: "You don't have any stories of your own?!?"
Suwako: "You never go outside?!?"
Kanako: "The nobles atop magnificence?!?"

"It's fine, it's fine," I tried to placate them. "I mean it's nice to go out like this and have a drink, but my shrine brings in life information from all over the world. There's never a lack of variety."

"You can take in all the information you want," Sanae said. "That's not the same as actually experiencing it. I read all the folklore about youkai, the kappa, the tengu, all of them. But then I came to Gensokyo and actually met them."

"An image on the wall isn't the same as the sun on your face, the earth under your feet, the chorus of frogs in your ears," Suwako said.

"There's nothing noble about those Lunarians," Kanako said. The other two were just concerned, but she was getting riled up. "You yourself were a victim of their tyranny, how can you talk about them like that? I spit on their magnificence!"

"It's just a name," I said. "I got used to calling them that. Should I call them Lunarians instead?" Names don't matter. Lunarians or nobles, it's all the same when it comes out Sabu's rear end.

"I'd tell you what they deserve to be called, but it's not suitable for Sanae's innocent ears." Kanako drained her sake dish and held it out for Sanae to refill. "Earlier you asked why I carry a shimenawa around. Well, let me tell you."

"Oh, boy. Here we go." Suwako settled in.

"This shimenawa," Kanako waved the loop, "was a 'gift'. A gift from those bitches atop shit. To remind me that they could have sealed me away if they wanted to. This looped shimenawa was meant as a dagger above my head, a noose around my neck. They wanted me to know how grateful I should be that they let me stay free. But I hang onto it, because it's a reminder of something else. It's a reminder of my brother, and how bravely he fought against them when they came down to conquer Japan. How he wouldn't surrender even with both arms ripped off, and the massive shimenawa they needed in the end to seal him. It's a reminder that the earthly gods have their pride, and that one day we'll rise again and those heavenly gods will be the ones cast low. I carry it to remember my brother, Take-Minakata."

Her brother, Take-Minakata.

I remembered him too.

Kanako and I were taking a well-earned break from our farming efforts, and she had joined me in my favorite pastime: a deer hunt. We'd tracked our prey to the edge of Yuiman Kingdom, but it had seemingly panicked and run off, and we lost the trail. It didn't take long for us to learn what had scared it. First a steady clang, clang, clang, then the sun gleaming bright off metal, then the army came into view. There must have been hundreds of men, each with an iron cap and breastplate and spearpoint. There was many times more iron here than in the entire Yuiman Kingdom, and none of it was in the form of farming tools. But even more intimidating was the leader.

His hair was the same purple as Kanako's, but their bodies couldn't have been more different. He rippled with muscles layered on muscles, and his arms were as thick as old oak trees. Draped over his massive frame was a simple yellow robe. The armor his troops wore would never have fit him, but his divine aura shone brighter and stronger than iron anyway. He was not just a god, he was a god among gods.

"People of Yuiman!" he bellowed, loud enough to wake the dead in the next realm over. "I am Take-Minakata, the Brave, the Forthright, the Metalsmith, the God of One Hundred Epithets! I am here for my sister; you will return her! Heed my words or be destroyed!"

Kanako's brother. Yuiman was supposed to be far away enough to be safe, but apparently not. I didn't figure I stood much chance against a god that strong, especially with an ironclad army at his back, but all I could do was give it a shot. I nocked an arrow in my bow.

"Wait." Kanako grabbed my arm. "You don't want to fight him." Of course I didn't, but when an army shows up to your doorstep that's just how it goes, right?

The behemoth spotted us. "Sister! I've come to take you back home!"

She pushed me aside and stepped forward. "With that army, brother? A snap of my fingers and those shiny toys are nothing but dust."

"That would be inconvenient, sister. You and I are going to have use for those armaments soon, when we begin our conquests in earnest."

"That has nothing to do with me. Yuiman is my home now."

Take-Minakata laughed. "This little kingdom could never house a great god of the Yamato. It's practically falling into the land of the dead. I don't see why you even..." He looked me over. "Ah, well, I can't blame you for wanting to have a little fun. But it's time to get serious now."

"I am serious. Yuiman is making big strides now that I'm blessing its fields. I'm going to bring them to greatness."

"And how many troops can this greatness set marching? How equipped? How many mouths can your blessed agriculture fill with rice and millet?" Take-Minakata shook his head. "I will put your seriousness to the test. We will return in three days' time. If you can put up serious resistance, I will recognize you as a god of the Yuiman and leave you in peace. Otherwise, this land will be our first conquest."

With a tromping about-face, the army departed.

I must have been shaking. Kanako grabbed my hands to comfort me. "It's okay. It's okay. It's all going to be okay."

"How can we defeat a god like that? Forget the army, I think your monster of a brother could take on the whole kingdom by himself."

Kanako pulled me in and gave me a long, searching kiss to shut me up. "Don't worry," she said when she pulled away. "We have built something great here. It's something you should be proud of. It's all going to be okay, I have a plan."

When we got home, Kanako told me I shouldn't tell anyone yet, that it would be counterproductive to worry them so soon. She set me to work making deer-liver field rations for the army. I didn't think Yuiman's small irregular army was going to be much use against the forces of Yamato, but Kanako assured me they had a key part to play in her plan. I worked late into the night and crawled into bed exhausted.

The next morning, there was an empty spot beside me and a note.

I'M SORRY, YUIMAN. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING. I'VE GONE TO JOIN MY BROTHER.

The rations were gone, and so was Kanako. The next time I saw her was in Gensokyo.

---

"...don't you think so, Yuiman?"

"I'm sorry?" I'd lost track of Kanako's rant while reminiscing.

"I said it'll be funny to see what happens to the Lunarians when you stop cleaning information for them. They built their precious capital on the premise of total purity, it'll collapse like a house of cards."

OK, things had gone way off-track. "I have no intention to stop, though?"

Kanako was taken aback. "What? You're free now. They can't make you keep doing it."

"Purifying information is the blessing of my shrine. It's what keeps Sabu fed. It's what I do. I don't need them to make me do it."

"What, they came and took over your shrine and bound you in slavery, and now that you're free you're going to just... keep working for them?"

Suwako cackled. "Yeah, what sort of assholes would just take over somebody's shrine like that? Unforgivable." She was having too much fun watching Kanako go off.

"I'm doing work that needs to be done!" I was getting a little heated myself now. "It's not just the nobles I'm protecting. Impure data is dangerous stuff. You like this Gensokyo, this happy paradise you've got? A refuge of fantasy where you can be safe from the modern world? What do you think a discharge of raw information from that modern world would do to it?"

"It'd cause an incident. Sure. We've handled incidents before. Sanae's such a veteran now, she can solve them with her eyes closed." Kanako winked at Sanae, who laughed awkwardly.

If she knew the things I'd seen... "You don't understand how toxic some of these internet memes are. Skibidi toilet and Italian brainrot would corrupt this place beyond recognition if me and Sabu didn't neutralize them."

"Internet memes?" Kanako gave a dismissive wave. "Like the uh, shoopy woopy? And all the base belongs to us? Sanae's an expert on those, no problem."

Sanae blushed. "That was so long ago! And it's not like I was an expert or anything. I just used to browse some boards."

An information processor, huh? Just like me.

"The fact is," Kanako said, "Gensokyo can handle a bit of off-color data much better than the Moon can. You have hold of their weak point. Don't worry about us! This is a chance to get back at them."

"But I just..." I wasn't getting my meaning across. "I don't want to get back at them. It's fine. I don't really care about them."

"They kept you enslaved for a thousand years! How is that fine?"

"They kept me in a comfortable shrine, gave me interesting work, and cherished my blessings. What more could a god ask for?"

"Respect!"

"Respect? You know I'm not too worried about respect." The words slipped out, lubricated by alcohol, before I could soften them. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here, after how you disrespected me."

"I-"

"You ran off in the night without even saying goodbye! Your brother called for you and you ditched me instantly, like you didn't care at all!"

"That's, I didn't want you to get hurt, the whole Yuiman Kingdom to get hurt. Take-Minakata was too strong, you had no chance against him."

"You know, I thought maybe you'd called me here to apologize to me. I was all ready to fight alongside you back then. Win or lose, whatever, we would have fought, together. You just left me."

"Fighting my own brother would be..."

"You never had any intention to fight, and now, now you want me to fight for you. Worse, for your brother who took you away from me!"

"I'm not asking you to fight! All you have to do is nothing!" Her face was flickering as she tried to maintain her divine dignity. "I am sorry, Yuiman. I wish things didn't end the way they did. But that and this are separate issues."

"They don't feel separate to me! You want me to take revenge for Take-Minakata, but to me he's an invader. I'm sorry for your loss, but-"

"It's not just about my brother. It's what they did to you! They sat in their pure eternal capital, lording it over us earthly gods, while making you slave away in that pyramid to preserve their lifestyle. Now we have the chance to GET them! Rub some dirt in their faces!"

"I don't care! I don't care about earthly and heavenly gods, I don't care about the capital, they can keep it. I just don't see what good it does to hurt them when I'm happy with the way things are!"

"You're just going to roll over for them? You're willing to be their bitch, just to spite me? Because you're still mad at me for going with my family to unify Japan?" Kanako was shouting now. "I can't believe it! I was trying to keep you safe! Just go rot away in your tomb then, if that's what you want! You can stay a Lunarian slave for all I care!" Sabu hissed at her. She shot him a look that made him duck his head inside my dress.

Sanae stretched out a hand to calm Kanako down, but she brushed her shrine maiden aside and stormed off into the main shrine building. She stomped hard as she passed under the giant shimenawa over the door.

I just stood there, opening and closing my mouth.

"Welcome to Gensokyo, kid," Suwako chuckled. "As you can see, we can be a lively bunch. 'specially when we're drunk."

I felt my stomach sinking. "I just, I just, I'm sorry."

Suwako slapped me on the back. "Don't worry about it. I've known Kanako a long time, she's just overexcited. She thought she saw an opportunity and she lost control a little. Deep down she doesn't want to push you to do anything you don't wanna do."

Sanae chimed in. "Lady Kanako really was happy to get a chance to see you again. I know she didn't mean it when she called you a b-word. I'm sure you're precious to her."

"Yeah..." Precious as her old friend, or as her weapon against the nobles?

"Well anyway, it looks like this party's about busted up," Suwako said with an exaggerated stretch. "It was nice to meet ya, Yuiman. You should come hang out again soon. Kanako'll be fine, she's just a little awkward about expressing her feelings. She's been carrying Take-Minakata's memory for a long time."

The memory of a sealed god... my head hurt. "Yeah, we'll get together sometime soon for sure."

"I mean it. I don't care what Kanako says, don't go hiding away in your pyramid. It's not just Kanako, the whole community wants to meet you. Next time we can have a proper party and introduce you to Youkai Mountain society. I hear you like deer hunting, maybe we could have a big ol' community hunt. We can call in the tengu and the kappa, maybe even that shithead fox Sanae's dating."

Sanae turned red. "Lady Suwako! We're just friends! I mean, she just hangs around the shrine without my permission, it's not like I like her or anything! I mean, this is not the time to be having this discussion!"

Suwako laughed. "Anyways, sorry today turned out like this, Yuiman, but don't be a stranger, all right? Gensokyo would love to get to know you."

---

I stumbled home through the corridors of my shrine, a little drunk and a lot distracted. Without the friendly guidance of the security stones, I might not have been able to find my way through the Zoltaxian Labyrinth.

That wasn't how I wanted our reunion to go, after all those years.

Should I be mad at the nobles? I couldn't bring myself to feel a thing about them, in their far-off capital. As much as Kanako wanted me to hate them, the spark didn't find any tinder. What would I gain from hurting them? If hurting them also meant hurting this new Gensokyo community I was supposed to be joining? If it meant leaving this shrine behind?

Should I be mad at Kanako? I couldn't find the strength to do that either. Even shouting and drunk, she was still that captivating goddess from my youth. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to have chosen me over Take-Minakata. I just wanted her.

And honestly, I understood why she was mad. The nobles had sealed away someone important to her...

My head was spinning as I dropped into the Pit of Four Seasons. I sat there, Sabu curling around me, and just stared at the scenes of old Yuiman Kingdom. The melting snow. The wind in the grass. The maples turning fiery colors. The clear sky at night with all the heavens on display. After a few hours watching in silence, I felt a little better. I was ready to set Sabu on the streams of data again.

Information had piled up while I was gone. I dove in and let my fingers do the sorting, muscle memory of a millennium going to work.

Have you ever thought to yourself 'I'd love to learn to cook, but it's just too hard to measure ingredients'? Our new meal kit brings-

Sanae seemed like a diligent, earnest girl. I'd like to think I was that charming when I was young. I hoped Kanako wasn't giving her too much trouble.

ANTARES CLUSTER: volatiles 60%, rare isotope 5%. Before prospecting, open the PROBE menu and scroll down to SPECIAL SURVEY OPTIONS-

Suwako seemed to have a good heart, too. She really knew how to make a girl feel welcome: by hunting deer. Kanako still owed me a deer hunt, too.

Roland's eyes flashed as Patricia flashed her eyes at him. "You're the only one I want," he breathed muskily-

I was in a good rhythm, sorting out the bits of life information to feed to Sabu. Just pick and clean, pick and clean, take in the raw data and send out the pure. I didn't have to think about my fight with Kanako, about the crimes of the nobles atop magnificence, didn't have to be sad or mad or any kind of emotion. I'd think about making up with Kanako, debuting in Gensokyo society, and everything else later. Just then, I was going to watch the four seasons and let the data wash over me.

A security stone nuzzled me comfortingly.

"Yeah. I'm home."

And I'll live happily ever after.

The crepuscular hues of the sky were obscured by the cotton blanket of silvery clouds; Rain had no desire to fall yet. The Sun's Prescene was still apparent. Imaihama Coast was vacuous, Everyone in the town of Kawazu had no desire to venture out in the upcoming night. Japan had been left in a state of disrepair following a series of calamities; Going outside when the nights are as frigid as ice and the waters were as turbulent as storms was a death wish. The only things to fill in the emptiness of the Beach was an outlandish from another world. Nobody knew why they were there, nobody knew where they came from, nobody knew who they were, but their gossips and rumors went deaf on her ears – Reisen had to ability to silence them whenever she pleased and didn't see a point to interacting with rumors, thus, she separated herself away from it.

Gensokyo was secluded away from the Outside World, so it wasn't affected with the same Calamities Japan went through years ago – Global warming reached its peak, The economy crashed, civilians thought tooth and nail for a proper place in a society that only valued the upper class, Typhoons and Earthquakes struck the country back to back; Cities and Capitals became an Oceanic Purtagory in the process; The lights have gone out. Those who survived were transported to safer and dry ground, while those who haven't were proof that these Cities used to be teeming with life. A few hours ago, Reisen saw one of those cities – Yokohama – submerged. From a Humanistic lense, It was dystopic; melancholic. Technicolor Lights used to dance and glimmer around Japan, but to Reisen, it envoked a feeling that neither of them could articulate into words: Was it Beauty? Was it Baroque? Something that teeters between Serene and Disturbing? The closest Reisen could describe it was linking to the feeling of 'Being a child who ran away from your family to see sights you weren't allowed to see'.

In that world, she was the 'child' in question. She left Gensokyo in secret, sparing no one the details of her location but it wasn't a permanent decision; it's only for today. Her excuse was that she needed a 'breather' from work and was sick of seeing the same Pastorals and Coverts of Bamboo and Youkai Dominated Mountains and Shrines on top of having to hear or deal with 'incidents' orchestrated by Gods and Youkai or Other kinds of Figures. The Great Hakurei Barrier protected those who reside in and repelled those outside of it, but Everything in the world, including the barrier of things, contained waves and Reisen can machinate those waves. Due to the size of the barrier, only a small portion was opened to let Reisen pass, though she had to crawl on all fours to do so. She carried maps and educational books about her destination bought from a store selling objects from the Outside World but wasn't expecting the places documented on the maps to look so... Battered.

---

She expected it to be a gruelling and forlorn experience but it ended up being the opposite, probably because she's not Human and didn't actually live through the tragedy –it's probably for the best. The view of sunken cities from a Mountain, Nature's nerves entwined in the cracks and scopes left by Humanity, the Pastorals and Countrysides here were far less tumultuous than the ones in Gensokyo; Kawazu's Cherry Blossoms felt more Lambent and Bigger than the Blossoms Reisen's familar with. Those were a fraction of what strung a specific melody into Reisen; the kind of melody that felt like an Ice on Bruise on her skin. They were more similar sights, such as Imaihama Coasts; Gensokyo didnt have a proper ocean; Rivers and Streams didn't lead to the ocean, it lead to the Afterlife. Reisen allowed herself to cool her legs against the waters. If she had a dry change of clothes, she would've bathed in it. But her legs were the only things getting wet.

She brought snacks with her – 3 Manju buns and an Onigiri. A bad habit of Reisen, putting aside full course meals if she's busy, while she does nibble on snacks during her interstitial breaks at work, it barely does anything to stiffle the hunger. She also carried Vitamins on her. Her Master, a Pharmacist, would always tell her "Its not food. Eat food better taking it", but she's alone. While Eating, she walked nearby sunken seas from mountains. Beautiful as it was lonely. The Backdrop of the Sun basking everything in its brilliance.

---

There's something about the current landscape of her life in Gensokyo that rung a cacophony in her mind.

It became a Habitual thing for Reisen to sneak off to go to the outside world after Work, because it's the one time she gets true solitude. Her station of work in Eientei used to be Arcadian in nature, especially when it's shrouded in coverts of Bamboo, but one of her Superiors, Princess Kaguya would often host Lunar Expos where she would invite everyone to see objects she that's she kept from when she used to be Lunar in Origin. Reisen too was lunar in Origin, so was another one of her Superior Eirin, and her hands were always full with dealing with the event, from helping Kaguya display her possessions in Perfect order to make Mochi. They were countless Rabbits that lived in Eientei but none of then wanted to work with Reisen and were more interested in working when they felt like it. Outside of that, Kaguya generally loves having guests around, something Reisen loathes.

Mid-Autumn Festivals were just as Gruelling to prepare as much as they were to be superimposed in for her. The Rabbits do work on Pounding Mochi and making other delights, but Reisen was in charge of preparing everything else, from decoration, to brewing drinks for multiple different guests, some were for within Eientei. "Gruelling. I burned my hand while brewing tea".

On top of all of this, her day job for the majority of the weak was Medicine Peddling in the Entire Human Village, starting from 7:00am until noon; Sometimes She's tasked to Peddle Medicine in the Evenings and act as a Travelling Doctor in place of Eirin.

Suffice to say, There's no proper breathing room for her in Eientei. The worst part in all of this was that her superiors assumed that she approved of this change; even when she's vocal about being against, she's lightly scolded, told that she has to be more 'accepting' for Humanity, but they fail to realize that Humanity doesn't except her. She wasn't a Lunar Noble like them, Would a Noble receive inflammatory comments behind their backs or in their face? "Her ears look like parasitic worms" "I can't understand anything she's saying." "She looks like a zombie compared to the other rabbits." "Her products looked sketchy".

Perhaps it's the reason why Reisen found herself coming back to those ruined places.There's a certain enticing feeling she got from watching things, living or inanimate get destroyed or destroying it with her own two hands. Humans called it Sadism, but to her it was Catharis. Both the Ice on Bruise and the fist to the bruise. Seeing submerged cities, tattered glass on buildings felt akin to breaking things out of stress. Perhaps the Earth too felt the same. Earth can change whenever it wanted to after all.

Even though She lived in a collective inside of a lavish mansion, part of something bigger than herself, she always found solace in being alone in ruins than anything else, even if it's lonely, even if the only one that's going to respond to her thoughts is herself, even if it means becoming separate from sanctuary because she was already ruined from the start. Tomorrow will be another day she'll go through this again and it'll become Yesterday before she lulls herself to sleep.

Note: This story covers some very heavy themes, if you can't stomach references to horrors of war (execution, rape, general combat, etc.) perhaps skip this one.

---

It was complete and utter hell. Reina, just a private like so many others in the Lunar Defense Forces, found herself nervously waiting in a trench like all the others around her, the seconds turning to minutes as they waited for the first enemy to come over the ridge.

The enemy hadn’t even been kind enough to let her get to this point unscathed - during their march to their positions, one of those damned propeller bombs dived on her column. While she had come out unscathed physically, that only meant that she would be one of those who would spend the next minutes desperately trying to apply first aid to moon rabbits who had entire chunks of body ripped straight out of them.

It didn’t get any better once they got to their new positions. They hadn’t even settled in for more than 15 minutes before another one of those propeller bombs began to circle overhead. However, instead of diving in for the kill, it seemed to merely be content to circle them.

The true purpose of this propeller “bomb” only became clear when artillery began raining down on their positions, wiping out a third of their remaining forces within minutes. Digging had been expedited with the intent on trying to dig out holes to hide in, only for a sudden sound of treads against ground made all of them tense.

Reina watched as the first enemy rolled over the ridge into view: a vehicle of some sort, very short with the front very sharply angled while the sides were near flat, with tracks running along a set of guide wheels propelling it. She noted that the rifle fire being pored onto it seemed to not faze it at all - clearly it was armored against rifle rounds. As one of the soldiers in another trench readied a rocket, she saw the low squad turret spin around to another trench that was still pouring on rifle fire, before with a surprisingly quiet thunk sound, it shot out a shell that exploded inside the trench, before the troops in the other trench fired their rocket launcher, and the vehicle went up in flames.

‘Holy shit! Maybe we can do this’ She naively thought to herself, before with a crash the burning wreckage was pushed out of the way by another vehicle.

While tracked, this one was much larger, with a still rather squat hull topped by a much larger turret, with a giant barrel protruding out the front, easily reaching out over the front of the vehicle. Perhaps the strangest addition was the multitude of what looked like super-sized versions of toy blocks placed all over the hull and turret.

With a loud Crack the infantryman next to her left fired off another rocket, hitting the tank and kicking loose a cloud of dust that obscured it from view. Her ears still ringing, Reina turned to the careless infantryman. “Would a ‘Backblast area clear!’ be too much to ask for?!”

Just as her fellow infantryman prepared a snarky comeback, the vehicle came lunging out of the cloud, the only sign of any impact being the lack of one of the blocks on the hull.

As if enraged, the turret turned to aim and her trench, and with a blast of light, she felt herself lose consciousness.

---

The tinnitus sound she heard from the blast slowly turned into the sound of her alarm clock going off next to her.

She turned over to the other side of her bed, before finding it uncomfortably empty. A rush of fear ran through her. Was her boyfriend taken? Did he leave her? Before the light-bulb above her head flickered on as she remembered that it was just Wednesday. He always left before her on Wednesday.

She hated Wednesday because of that. The empty apartment reminded her of times before she moved in with him, of being a stranger in a strange land, with nobody she could rely on, only herself and herself alone.

Forcing herself up, she continued with her daily morning routine as normal, at least with any steps involving her boyfriend omitted - at least he always made her breakfast before he headed out to work on days like this. She could cook just fine, but it was still nice of him to do so, and it certainly saved her a lot of time.

As she exited the elevator of her apartment building, made her way to her car and opened the door, she consciously had to flatten her ears to slip into the seat. That was just one of the prickly oddities she as a moon rabbit had to face on an earth built for humans.

Pulling out of the parking lot, and with her mind now mostly free thanks to the (for now at least) quiet traffic, a dark creeping thought began to invade her mind.

‘Look at you, complaining all about how it’s so hard to be able to fit in with this world. You should be thankful just for being here, you know. There’s always open spots for bunnies like you in the mines.’

The mention of ‘The Mines’ made her physically cringe. As it turned out, when one found themselves with an army of aimless moon rabbits who were brought up being treated like slaves and following orders to the letter and the discovery of Lunarite and it’s quasi-magical properties, little old things like hu- moon rabbit rights or compliance with work safety regulations could be ignored in the name of ‘greater geo-strategic interests.’

The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?

It was a place where moon rabbits of all kinds were worked to death to pay off their debts to the country that had so graciously liberated them, before almost immediately putting them all back in chains. Rations were tied to production quotas, miss a quota, well, I hope you like going hungry. Bringing in human workers or bots? Nope, sorry, you are better adapted to living on the moon anyway, so pick up those picks or face the wall covered in bloodstains and bullet holes. And for those caught in the act of sabotage or rebellion? Well, as it turns out, the rumors about the “Cosby Room” were very, very real.

It sickened her to her core to think that there might be moon rabbits just like her who fought through hell to make it to American lines and save themselves from a horrific fate of gang rape by the Russians, only to end up being raped in an American run mine and by Americans themselves instead.

As she accelerated onto the expressway, her mind creeped even further into her past, filling the space left by the low stress of highway driving. That sound her car made when she accelerated, it almost sounded like...

---

She had been making her way, well.. in the opposite direction of where the Russians were for about 5 days now.

She had managed to get her hands on some rough intelligence of which countries were operating, and more importantly, where. She was making her way to the American lines, but she didn't have a straight, clean shot. Instead, she had a choice of sneaking through any number of hodgepodge countries she didn't even know the flags of, let alone the level of professionalism of their soldiers.

As it turned out, picking the Greek sector was a bad idea.

The Greeks seemed to love traveling light compared to their peers, but instead of letting her have a fair fight, it meant that they were scarily quiet compared to the Russians; Instead of rolling around in large heavy tanks, they slowly rolled down the streets in those four wheeled armored boxes of theirs, lights off as they just watched their surroundings through those damn night vision optics of theirs.

It also meant that if they got a general bead on where you were, they could bottle you up in no time flat.

At any time during the day or night, she might be unlucky enough to hear the revving of an engine, panicked screams, and the staccato of heavy caliber gunfire as another moon rabbit met their end.

At least those were the lucky ones.

The unlucky ones activated some sort of chase instinct. Maybe it was the idea of hunting down such frantic and desperate prey that made the sadism come out? Either way, if you managed to get away the first time, they'd go into overdrive and swarm the entire area, treating it like a game to the point where she overheard some soldiers placing bets on which 'vic' would catch a certain escapee.

As if on cue, the sound of footsteps came from her left. leaning further into her hiding spot, she watched as another moon rabbit rounded the corner, exhaustion visible on their face as closing behind her were the visible beams of light from a chasing vehicle's headlights.

"Run, little rabbit! RUN!" A taunting voice called out from the vehicle.

As the moon rabbit kept running down the street, a sudden, loud crack of gunfire echoed as the moon rabbit's leg was hit, causing her to fall onto the ground helplessly as the vehicle rounded the corner, doors on the vehicle's side swinging open as soldiers rushed out, whooping and hollering, before gathering around the wounded rabbit.

The vehicle itself was another one of those tall four wheeled armored vehicles with a v-shaped hull with the squat turret on top. It seems these hunters had even more a sense of humor than usual, they had written "LEFKADA PEST EXTERMINATORS" onto a piece of wood they had attached to the front of their vehicle.

"No, listen, roll her onto her back and lift the skirt."

"Shit! See that blood there? Fucking bitch is damaged product!"

A groan of disappointment came from the group.

"I'm not risking getting some Ruskie STD. Let's finish her off."

The soldiers got back in their vehicle, before with a loud revving noise the vehicle sped over the wounded rabbit, the sounds of bone cracking as the rabbit was run over audible from her hiding spot.

Instead of continuing on it's way though, the vehicle came to a stop, and the turret rotated around, before the deafening roar of an automatic heavy machine gun filled her ears for what must have been 10 seconds as they unloaded into the corpse with bullets, ripping the poor rabbit into chunks of unrecognizable meat.
Only then did they decide to put their vehicle in drive and move on.

---

As she got off the freeway and pulled into her job, the feeling of soon being at her desk and clocked in, caused a sudden feeling of empty happiness filled her entire being. Doing her job, and doing it well, sent a feeling of satisfaction that, judging from the rather apathetic performance of some of her human coworkers, was not something humans experienced.

While it certainly meant she wasn’t going to be passed up for promotion, it also made her aware, once she left work at the end of her shift, the fact that, deep down, she was no different from any other moon rabbit. Just like all the others, she had bred over generations to be nothing more than obedient slaves to their Lunarian masters, following whatever orders were given to them, no matter what they might be.

And yet, that conditioning had unintended (at least she assumed unintended) consequences: Lunarians were followers, not leaders. Leave them in charge of themselves, and very quickly they clam up, unknowing what to do without the constant attention of those above them. It was no wonder that when the orders came to go back into the mines, so many of her friends had obediently marched back down into hell itself.

She was one of the lucky ones, able to shake that need for someone to command her somewhat, she had snuck onto earth, and had lived in squalid conditions, up until meeting her boyfriend, who was more than happy to take her in. But even now she could feel that need within her, that little desire in the back of her mind to submit to her boyfriend, to do whatever he wanted, to serve him as best she could.

And it made her sick.

She had gone through hell on the moon to escape being a slave to the lunarians, only to end up on earth and nearly willingly put the chains back on herself.
Thankfully her boyfriend, after she explained her... condition, to him, had made sure to squash any sort of submissive behavior in the bud. She was his girlfriend, they were equals. Nothing more, nothing less. That didn't stop that little desire from still persisting however, a feeling in the back of her mind that she couldn't quite get rid of, a whisper of the master's whip she could still almost feel against her back.

As she finished up her work for the day and logged off, that familiar, gnawing feeling returned, the one that always manifested when the structure of work hours faded. Now, she simply had to endure until she was in her boyfriend's arms.

The drive home was a blur of taillights and concrete dividers. The massive road construction project going on, while annoying enough to most drivers, made this nightmare infinitely worse every minute she was stuck alongside them, the memories trickling back in.

The rhythmic thumping of autocannon rounds raining down on a position as she quietly snuck around, that distinct heat of a searchlight shining down on her, the clinical orders of human soldiers as they ruthlessly searched the city block by block, building by building, room by room...

In a flash her mind jumped into even darker places - the gasping sounds and pleas coming from a wounded moon rabbit as he tried to crawl across the ground, and the sound of a waiting sniper's bullet ripping through another moon rabbit as she tried to rescue him.

As she got out of the car and entered the apartment building, her pack quickened, until at least she arrived at their apartment. Turning the key, she opened the door and was greeted by the warm embrace of her boyfriend.

"I've been waiting for you to come home, dear." He said, holding her tight, with Reina responding by wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest.
"Rough day?" he murmured, picking up on her distress.

"Rough memories," she corrected, her voice muffled against his shirt.

"Ah." He didn't press further. He never did. He just held her, a silent, comforting presence until she felt better. He understood that her past was a minefield, and he was content to simply stand at the edge, offering a hand to pull her back whenever she stepped too close.

Or perhaps more accurately, offer her a headpat.

And for a rabbit, a headpat could make all the difference in the world.

Running his hand through her hair, stroking it softly between her ears, Reina felt herself melt against him like butter on a hot stove top, all her stress and worry draining away as she stood there, lost in the bliss of the gentle, rhythmic motion.

She knew that somewhere deep inside her, the obedient slave that she still was, even after all this time, was overjoyed. Being treated like this, with such tenderness and care, it was what she, and every other moon rabbit, was built for. To serve and to be cared for in return. A twisted, symbiotic, hell, parasitic relationship of master and pet. But that wasn't what this was, she reminded herself. This wasn't the cloying, conditional affection of a Lunarian for a useful tool. This was different. This was real.
Even if a part of her brain refused to accept that.

She then felt herself being slowly guided by her boyfriend to the living room, and he gently lowered onto the couch, Reina still wrapped around him as she sat on his lap. As he sat there, a small smile on his face as he continued to run his hands through her hair and rub behind her ears, eliciting a quiet mewl from her as she rested her head on his shoulder.

For other couples, something like this would be considered risqué, to say the least - with how often they did this she felt that quiet a few might look at the two as more sex friends than lovers. Yet, for a rabbit like her, this was merely another, albeit more pleasant, form of bonding - and yet another example of how alien her life was in comparison to the ones she saw on TV and heard about over break room coffee.

With the stress of her memory already melting away, she began to lean into the touch, her mind no longer at war with itself, but instead content to simply enjoy the pleasure and closeness. She could feel her ears beginning to relax, betraying her contentment.

A soft sigh escaped her lips as she shifted, idly thinking about how, perhaps... Perhaps just for right now, she could let him take care of her and cast aside any and all worries of whatever her Lunarian masters had imprinted in her.

Sometimes, to win a war, you have to know when to retreat from a battle.

Waking up a little later than usual, Mike found that every single spot had vanished from her pelt. Sleep, black and wet, like a dog’s nose, left the clean, paper-white cat alone with her rustling. Just like leaves rustle under a paw.

Crisp autumn leaves, calico autumn leaves.

She had dreamt of these leaves, rolling over the asphalt with the mist. From time to time, she came across wrecked, empty cars, their bonnets strewn with shards of shattered windscreen. The further she went, the stranger the road markings behaved: they danced and twisted into knots and arrows, pointing to a solitary fragment of the wall a car had crashed into. Here, the ground was strewn with broken maneki-neko figurines from the Goutokuji Temple, each of which, strangely enough, still held a dirty brush in its paw. Here, too, a white silhouette of a cat had been painted, marking the spot of the accident’s victim.

Mike felt sick as the dream began to blur and melt: even if she were destined to die under the wheels, even here, those smug temple faces would get to her, just to paint over the mark left by her corpse! The figure was thickly painted over on the inside, but the wind had still blown leaves onto it, covering the flat cat and spoiling its new colour.

Something glinted beneath one of the leaves. At first, Mike thought it was just another shard of glass reflecting the moonbeam, but that little glint shone brightly and seductively.

Even when the cat woke up, she continued to hold onto that glint. Rubbing her eyes and finally confirming that the stains had vanished, she didn’t immediately remember the gift, but it was quick to remind her with a hot prick in the pads of her fingers.

“It’s a nice coin,” Mike concluded as she held the find up to her eyes, “Surprisingly lucky. Clean.”

A clean coin is a coin earned through honest labour. Any maneki-neko worth its money could recognise it instantly. To lure other coins, though, a special kind of skill was needed — and Mike, having never completed her temple training, did not possess it.

“I’ll figure it out along the way,” she decided, slamming the door shut behind her. The coin was indeed a good one; it carried enough luck that even an unprepared cat could sense it and trust it.

Outside, clear streams rustled, water crashing against the rocks. Her intuition led her up the mountain paths, seemingly toward the area where the tengu built their red cedar bridges. Stopping by one of the springs, Mike took a proper look at her new coat in the reflection.

White. Not a single spot — just like a proper, hard-working maneki-neko. The only thing missing was a well-fed, prosperous face. The cat stretched her cheeks with her paws, trying to force a ‘lucky’ smile out of herself.

Thunder clapped somewhere in the distance, and tengu curses echoed in turn. Twitching her tail nervously, Mike rose from her knees and trudged further up the mountain, splashing through the puddles. She wanted to scratch at the trees and stretch her lips once more, just so it would sting those stupid tengu even harder. Perhaps this would now become her new job: to be the Kitten of Great Misfortune, since fate had decided to strip her of the privilege of being spotted and useless.

The little shop to which the path had led her stood out from the rest with its empty sign. From this very emptiness, Mike immediately realised that the coin had pointed her to the right place.

The building was a ramshackle mess with a sloping, low-slung roof. A bell clinked sadly at the entrance.

“Excuse me? Are you selling anything here?”

Mike quickly lost her resolve: the little shop was just as empty on the inside. Too empty, in fact: the long shelves looked derelict and dusty, and no one was there to greet the customer from behind the abandoned counter. The silence was broken only by the occasional, discordant tap.

Tilting her head up towards the ceiling, the cat spotted the only shelf that wasn’t empty. On it, lined up neatly and encased in glass, stood pure-white maneki-neko, occasionally twitching their paws with a touch of laziness, lost in their own thoughts.

Tap. Tap. Another second of silence, and then another tap. No order, and no meaning — there was nothing for customers to do in this place.

“Why are you sitting in those jars?”

“Because they believe values can be preserved,” a hoarse and indiffirent voice replied, and Mike lowered her gaze.

Now there stood an antique-style plaster bust on the counter. A poet, a philosopher, or perhaps even a military commander — she couldn’t say for certain, so rapidly did his features change, as if the material was alive.

But that wasn’t the point — slowly, like clouds, black and red spots were drifting across the white plaster! Her spots!

“Why is it so... Empty in here?” asked Mike, fighting the urge to grab the antique bust and smash it against the floor. If she didn’t find out how this thing took her spots, she’d never get them back, even if she tore the whole little shop to pieces.

“Some like it when they don’t have nothing,” the bust’s features began to contort unnaturally, and sad cat-like eyes opened at the back of its head; and second later, a white cat leapt onto the counter, calico spots hastily stuck onto its fur, “But I, for one, prefer to have nothing.”

“Right, a philosopher, then. A poet, at most,” Mike decided to herself, frowning, “If you like your nothing, then be happy with it. But give me my spots back.”

“I paid for them,” replied the unfamiliar cat calmly, pointing with his paw at the coin clenched in Mike’s fist, “And I am not issuing a refund. The contract doesn’t provide one...”

“There was no contract!”

“Then let me contract my speech!” the cat retorted, his fur bristling, “The elders of Goutokuji Temple witnessed the transaction; you saw them yourself. Or are you a thief that takes other people’s money?”

“Whether I’m a thief or not, I know for certain that such a fine coin cannot belong to such a wretched cat!”

The philosopher rolled his eyes. Tears dripped onto the counter.

“Oh, how I suffer!” he sniffed theatrically, showing his stump of a tail. “Look at me! How many defects have I taken on? Tens, hundreds? And you?”

He twitched his ears, pointing to a row of pure-white maneki-neko, as white as a mouthful of teeth.

“You’re all like that, the lot of you!”

“Like what?” Mike asked, genuinely surprised. “You collect defects and... try them on yourself?”

“Well, I can’t exactly put a bald spot in a jar! Look at how twisted and bent I am. There isn’t a single solid bone left in my whole body!”

And indeed, stretching out, he tied himself into a knot, entangling like a clump of fluffy snakes. And then, the living antique head stared at her again, as if in accusation.

“I... I don’t even know what to say,” the cat stammered. She couldn’t tell if the sight was impressive or frightening. “I really do feel sorry for you, but I didn’t want to...”

“I didn’t ask,” remarked the philosopher, his tone suddenly changing. “A deal is a deal. And why I need your defects is none of your cat-business.”

“But, surely, they can be returned?”

The bust looked pensive.

“I won’t take no money. But you can work for them.”

“But I haven’t finished my training yet!”

“Everyone here is like that. They do quantity because they can’t do quality.”

The coin fell to the floor with a loud clink. Bending down, Mike noticed that it was now the size of her palm... Or rather, the size of a decent onigiri. If onigiri were made to feed a group of hungry tourists. By the time the cat finally realised that she was the one shrinking, she had already ended up under a glass dome, on the shelf with the other maneki-neko. The philosopher, meanwhile, peacefully closed his eyes, and instantly feel asleep; only the sideburns of his cunning head seemed to be breathing faintly. Mike blankly stared at them:

“I wonder how he manages to keep his fur smooth when he curls up like that?” she thought, because she couldn’t think of anything else. Her mind was empty and clear. Clearer than in the quiet little shop; but even through the glass of the jar, the cat could feel the intense scrutiny of her new neighbours.

The tapping of paws stopped. Someone had to make the first move.

“Um... Does he often fall asleep like that?” Mike asked, trying to sound clueless and innocent.

“Quite often. He needs to keep luring naive little kittens here,” chuckled the figurine on the right. Its head was chipped diagonally, exposing a grey, spongy interior, and where its ear should have been, something resembling a cocktail umbrella was sticking out, as if in a mockery. Clutching the coin so tightly her fingers ached, Mike decided she’d actually been very lucky, and that paying with cash was a good, proper tradition anyway.

“What, is it really that bad up close?” the cat asked, without a trace of sadness or resentment.

“I thought he took our flaws...”

“Not all of them,” replied the cat on the left. Glossy and plastic, he looked cheap and had already turned yellow in places. “Look at yourself, you’re skin and bones. You’d make a better sashinawa than you would a maneki-neko: you’d have a perfect kanmon right there. You’re so long, you are...”

“Don’t be so unwelcoming,” grumbled the one on the right, “But yes, it is true. Our poor old man’s thin enough as is — he’d have wasted away. Not to mention — ha! — me! You can’t exactly think straight with half a head!”

“Then what’s the point? What’s the meaning of it all?”

“He’s not a cat at all! I’m telling you: it’s Nurarihyon, lord of the yokai, the night-stroller. He comes cloaked in mist,” came a voice from the far corner.

“Nonsense!” exclaimed the One On The Left, creaking discontentedly. “He’s just a crazed masochist! He likes being miserable, surrounded by those who bring joy, so he can feel special and important!”

“You should see what happens when customers turn up at his place,” nodded the One On The Right, “We’re not just waving our paws for nothing. Someone’s bound to be tempted: they’ll walk past and ask themselves, “What’s this shop with the blank sign?” They’ll go in — and the shelves are all empty too. Dreadfully interesting!”

“The greater the interest, the greater the disappointment,” remarked Mike.

“Exactly! Oh, they get absolutely livid, you should see it! When they realise they’ve been had. And that’s just what ‘Nurarihyon’ loves: he starts shedding tears and glaring at us like a predator — his eyes are practically bursting with hatred. And there was that one other time...”

But the cat wasn’t listening to them anymore, having lowered her ears and become completely lost in her own thoughts. An hour, two, maybe more passed — the philosopher was still asleep. The figurines had quietened down, speaking in hushed whispers. Someone was recounting with great fervour how he got his nose broken at a Tokyo festival: everyone had been working that hard. Unlike a certain someone.

A bad cat can’t have a good coin.

A bad cat that doesn’t work.

In her lazy paws, a gift will quickly lose its power. But so what? The ‘Sanzan-Shoufuku’ technique is top-class. Luring a customer isn’t enough; it’s important to make them a regular: money they leave shall attract more money. But what sort of regular customer would turn up at a place where there’s nothing to buy?

“And my coin is very clean,” Mike said in a sing-song voice, trying to attract the attention of her dozing neighbours. It was getting late.

“Be careful not to get it dirty,” yawned The One On The Left, “Work hard.”

“But I don’t like working!”

“That’s your own problem.”

Another dead end. Then the cat addressed The One On The Right directly — he seemed more good-natured:

“Nyan-senpai, could you help me attract a regular customer?”

“Want to get on the boss’s good side? Forget it: he can’t stand us.”

“I want... To be bought! Spots and all.”

The one on the right opened his single eye wide and burst into hearty laughter.

“Come on! What difference does it make which shelf you stand on? It’s not exactly a cushy job, but you can slack off a bit. Look, the fifth one from the left doesn’t even have a working paw, you know?”

“But how can he... Is his paw really?..” Mike wondered. Being a skinny maneki-neko is a disgrace. Being a spotted maneki-neko is an even greater disgrace. But being a maneki-neko without a working paw is like not being a maneki-neko at all.

“I doubt most of them ever learnt anything at all,” The One On The Left interjected. “Look at me! I’m a plastic toy that’s supposed to run on a solar battery. Would they ever sell me at a shrine? I’m a manufacturing defect! And no so-called ‘Nurarihyon’, however many tears he sheds, could possibly contain the pain of thousands, no, millions of kittens churned out across the globe in the hope of securing even a shred of Great Fortune.”

The sleeping philosopher’s face twitched as if from a sharp toothache.

“But he said you do quantity! Isn’t that a compliment?”

“Quantity of sleepy cripples”, nodded the one on the right, removing a collar with a golden bell from his neck, “Hey, you premature lot! Enough snoozing, get to work!”

“Oh, why don’t you get to work?” someone replied cheerfully. “When I lived with my family, they’d throw me in a box every night so my tapping wouldn’t disturb their sleep. Since then, you know, I haven’t really bothered. Especially here — there’s no point anyway!”

“I... had a dream,” Mike spoke up, “The elders of Goгtokuji Temple were lying broken on a road somewhere in the Outside World.”

“In a dream, not for real,” the One On The Left rightly pointed out.

“The contract was also in a dream, but he took her real spots,” replied the One On The Right, “Carry on, girl.”

“I don’t like Goutokuji Temple,” she admitted earnestly, “but I trained there. I was never diligent. And this strange deal, the broken figurines forming the silhouette of a cat that’s been in a car crash — it looks like some kind of plot. Why would the Goutokuji elders break their own incarnations? To punish me? To scare me? I think that if broken elders don’t cease to be elders, if their opinion on the deal is valid...”

“... Then even a broken maneki-neko can bring good luck. If it tries hard enough,” the One On The Right winked, “To be fair, this shelf is a good home for many. You could say we’ve all got our share.”

“That’s the point! You’re all so... Flawed, yet you’re not worried about it at all. And you don’t ask for pity.”

“You just wouldn’t know it by looking. We’re quite well-behaved,” replied the One On The Left.

“Alright, have it your way,” agreed Mike, “I’ll work too, I won’t complain. But I want to try ‘Sanzan-Shoufuku’: I can’t do it on my own. Even if a customer comes, even if they have no money, I want to keep my gift. And to make this coin spotless, so it shines like dew at dawn after a misty night.”

“It’s the only thing you have left, after all,” agreed the One On The Right. “Growing your capital is a task worthy of a proper maneki-neko. Teach us what you know. Tell us how the Goutokuji cats work.”

And Mike began to tell her tale. It was long and rambling, not at all remarkable for its kind, but the others eagerly hung on her every word, hungry for joy, bored in their cramped jars. It was not so much the lesson itself as the feeling of being part of the temple’s wisdom that made the contented cats raise and lower their paws more and more than usual. A little uncertain at first, but the more the maneki-neko worked, the more their movements synchronized.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap!

And once more, another ‘tap’, but much louder!

A lively joy welled up in Mike’s heart, beating in unison with the others. It overflowed, spilled out, gushed from the jar and mingled with the joy of the others. Silly, pointless, utterly groundless, yet loud and solemn. The clean coin soaked it up like a sponge, almost trembling with satisfaction: something big, rich, and plainly good was approaching, and this spurred the cats on to tap-tap with renewed vigour. The young Tokyo kitten with the broken nose even struck up a trendy little tune:

“Nya-nyan ga nyan! Nya-nyan ga nyan! Goro-goro nyantokite, nya-nyan ga nyan!” he chanted loudly, as if he were back at a modern festival.

“A-sore! A-sore! Nya-nyan ga nyan!” the others sang along, waving their paws so wildly that, were it not for the glass, they would have knocked off more than just each other’s noses.

The riot roused the discontented philosopher. With a truly martyr-like intonation, he exclaimed:

“Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods!”

“Shoubai hanjou! Shiroi maneki-neko!” came the reply, whilst the philosopher continued to revel in his own obscurity, speaking in disjointed quotations in various languages and sniffing dramatically. Everyone was content.

The music played on. Mike blissfully closed her eyes, sinking into the shared rhythm. The beat lulled her, though even through it she could hear a quiet, quickening mechanical spinning: it must have been that cat who’d lost his working paw trying to make his own modest contribution to the common cause.

“Kin no maneki-neko...”

A sudden crash interrupted the song. Cat screams, shattering glass, splintering wood — Mike had fallen off the shelf and hit her head hard on the counter, and when she finally came round, she could scarcely believe her eyes.

The back wall of the shop was now one large hole, into which a tiny little ladybug-patterned red car had crashed. Her new friends, round and plump, struggled helplessly on its crumpled bonnet, suddenly finding their freedom amidst the broken jar glass.

And on the floor, in an unnatural pose, lay ‘Nurarihyon’, pretending to be hopelessly crushed.

The spots, flung off by the impact against the shiny bumper, slowly fell onto his flat body like autumn leaves, leaving the paper cat alone with its own rustling.

Crisp and calico...

A red shoe stepped on one such leaf. Lowering her gaze, the hard-working witch (and she surely must have been a witch!) immediately forgot about the car, and her face lit up.

“Poor little kitty! But what a delicate, clever little face you’ve got!”

The philosopher dug his claws into the floor with his last ounce of strength. But nothing could stop the loving girl: she was the sort of person who would let the whole world fade into the background once she was overcome by passion.

“The hour of departure has come, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live,” concluded ‘Nurarihyon’, nodding sternly at Mike, though he clearly had no intention of dying. Judging by the way his breathing quickened whilst the witch was wrapping him in her apron, his bones had fully returned to him. His tail, which had grown back too, was tying itself into knots.

“You really should have preserved your values!” remarked the One On The Right, as if to preach — no longer on the right, but simply sprawled on the back seat of the car, stuffing taiyaki that didn’t belong to him into his mouth. “We did a good job, didn’t we?”

The One On The Left said nothing, trying to press a broken solar panel against his stomach. Here and there, cats were rummaging through the wreckage, but their well-fed faces showed that they were enjoying this feast.

“That was quite a quite the rumble!”

“But the little shop... I’ll donate my coin towards the repairs, but...”

“Fluffy. Ellen’s. Magic. Shop,” the witch chirped in a bout of inspiration, twirling in a waltz with her new pet. “I used to have one like that... Or did I? I had a cat too... I think. Oh, isn’t it lovely?”

“Run now, while she hasn’t come to her senses and decided she needs more friends,” advised the One On The Right, popping his tail into his mouth. “We’ll fix this old wreck and open up our own school, now that the Council of Elders has allowed us to take our places in the real world. You’ll approve, won’t you, Goutokuji-sensei?”

“For the millions of kittens who want to learn to bring Great Luck?” smiled Mike, bracing herself for a lightning’s strike.

But the sky stayed clear.

“I don’t mind. If the elders object, it’s their own problem, let them sort it out; I’d rather stay unemployed,” concluded Mike, waving her paw farewell and heading off into the forest, where there were still so, so many leaves. There were enough of them to make so many spots that even the clouds could be covered up — the clouds drifting off like fluffy cats towards their bright, sunny, shiny, like a good, clean coin, vast and well-fed joy.

Last Friday of November, Season 77
Sake wa Tomodachi Pub

The mustached man weaved through the crowds in the pub, looking for a place to sit.

“Oi!” A voice called out to him. He turned to see a clean shaven fellow who he recognised from work. He had a mop of black hair atop his head, the sides cropped shorter. There was a free seat in front of him. With a shrug, he sat down opposite the clean shaven fellow.

They were quiet at first, just waiting to be served. Soon enough, they had received their beverages; two cups of strong alcohol. The two of them clacked their glasses together and then drank, the mustached man in measured sips, while the clean shaven fellow took great gulps.

The mustached man laughed. “Take it easy there, man. It’s not a race”

The clean shaven fellow took a moment to rub his chest “Easy for you to say. The boss has been on my back the entire week about one thing or the other.”

Another serving of alcohol was provided, the pair of them giving their thanks to the waiter

The mustache man shook his head at his friend’s misfortune. He took a moment to look around the pub, catching the eyes of the owner. “Hah, must be because you tripped over his fence. You love those books of yours too much!”

The clean shaven fellow flushed. “Oi, I didn’t even damage the thing. Though I did accidentally step on one of the flowers… Got a real dressing down from that lady, too?”

The mustached man tilted his head. “ The boss’s wife?”

The clean shaven fellow shook his head. “No, not her. Some green haired lady was passing by. Probably about twenty years old. Gave me a real lecture about being mindful of plantlife. It’s strange though… Frankly, I was more scared of her than I was of the boss”

The mustached man smiled mischievously. “You sure it was just fear you were feeling?”

The clean shaven fellow sighed. “I’m sure. Besides, I’m a taken man, as of two months ago.”

“Congratulations, man! Though now that you mention it, my own other half might be expected me back soon.”

“Oh? Why do you look frightened, then?”

“She’s with my mother-in-law. That woman has always had it out for me!”

The clean shaven fellow laughed. “I’ll say a prayer for you, then. Oi, if you’re free next Friday…”

The mustached man caught his meaning. “I probably will be. Until then though…” he held his cup in the air.

“Cheers!” two cups clinked together. The duo tipped their drinks into their mouths, the alcohol burning in their throats.

---

Last Friday of November, Season 80
Sanpai Pub

“Cheers!”

Three glasses clinked together. The trio tipped their drinks into their mouths, the alcohol burning in their throats.

“This is some damn good sake, I must admit.” The brown haired man said.

“I told you, right, Motoori?” The clean shaven fellow smirked.

The mustached man shook his head. “Well, the fried vegetables are this place’s real specialty. The owner knows how to stew them just right.”

Motoori stroked his beard, ruffling the brown goatee.

“The two of you are as lively as ever. But if there’s vegetables that have you more excited than any of the meat dishes, they must really be something.” He remarked.

“Oi, oi.” The clean shaven fellow shook his glass at Motoori. “We’re not just some meatheads, you know. We’re cultured gentlemen, well read. Right?” He turned to his friend.

“Ah, speak for yourself. I’m just fine being a meathead. Or maybe a vegetablehead!” the mustached man said, leaning back to laugh.

“Maybe your brain is in your stomach…” Motoori noted dryly.

“Ah, we just live each day as it comes. Still, how goes it with you, Motoori? Any luck with that bookish girl?” The mustached man said.

Motoori took a deep sip and sighed. His two drinking mates shared a look. That was not the sigh of good alcohol hitting the stomach, but of anxiety and anguish welling from the gut.

“How bad?” The clean shaven fellow asked.

“I was on a walk with her, and all was going well. She had even worn her favourite kimono, the white one with the bell patterns on it. But then, we passed by the calamari stand- the one which always slathers their food in ink,”Motoori said with a frown. “And I decided, I should get her something. I walked over to speak to the vendor, leaned on the stand, just a little, and then the wheel gave out and brought the whole thing toppling onto us! I managed to prevent us from being crushed, but she was quick to leave after that.” The man drained the remaining half of his beer at that, sagging onto his chair.

The two drinkers let their friend have a moment of quiet.
“Wait, you held up the cart? The entire thing?” The mustached man asked. Motoori answered him with a nod.

“Looks like you don’t skip on the meat or the vegetables,” The clean shaven fellow jested. It didn’t improve Motoori’s mod a jot, the man continuing to look haunted. “Still, have you seen the lady since this happened?”

“Suzuna. Her name is Suzuna. And no, I haven’t seen her since then. I fear how she’ll react if she sees me again.”

The mustached man chuckled, Motoori shooting him a deadly glare. “You worry too much, man. How are you always describing the girl?”

“She’s beautiful, kind and intelligent. I think she’s the cleverest girl I’ve ever met.” The brown haired man said, with a nostalgic expression.

“Well, if she’s so clever, she’ll be able to figure out it was all a big mistake. But you’re a man, Motoori, so it’s going to have to be you that reaches out to her. If you don’t, then she’s going to slip out between your fingers.” the mustached man said, steel entering his voice.

“And if you just let her slip between your fingers, you’ll regret more than her choosing to break things off with you. Trust me.” The clean shaven fellow added sternly, a mourning note colouring his tone.

Motoori looked into the man’s eyes, their sternness matching his tone.

“Gentlemen,” He said, standing up and donning his coat. “It seems I’ve got some business to attend to.”

The two men gave the brown haired man a nod as he walked, and then ran into the night.

“... It probably would have been best if he waited until the morning.” The clean shaven man noted.

“Ah, well I couldn’t squash that enthusiasm of his.” the mustached man said sheepishly.

The two laughed, and waved a waitress over.

And so the alcohol flowed, and so too did conversation.

---

Third Friday of August, Season 91
Morimoto's Pub

“Cheers!”

Four glasses clinked together. The quartet tipped their drinks into their mouths, the alcohol burning in their throats.

The thin, tall, silver haired man was quick to take a bite of his vegetables, his serious expression lightening slightly as he ate. “These vegetables are quite tasty. I see why you have such high praises for this place, Mr Kirisame” he remarked.

Kirisame laughed, the booming sound clear even over the ambience of the other patrons.

“So what it takes to get you out of your shell is some steamed veggies, Morichika? I’ll tell Mirabelle, she’ll be glad for the break from making pork buns and steak.” His cheeks were blushed and he was unsteady in his seat; the merchant had always been poor at holding his drink.

“I am simply appreciating the skill of the chef. Your wife’s cooking is good in its own right.”

“Ah, if Morichika here proves himself too picky an eater, then you can always give us some of the leftovers.” The mustached man. The thin hairs on top of his head had given way to a bald spot, one only slightly covered by hairs combed over it.

“Those ‘quiche’ things of hers were just wonderful.” The clean shaven fellow reminisced. His hair now had errant streaks of grey

“The two of you don’t need to worry. I am more than happy to finish anything made by Mirabelle myself. As you can clearly see!” He patted his belly; while not overly so, he was more round than the usually lean men of the village. The two regulars had a good laugh at his self-deprecation.

The silver haired man smiled politely.

“Yes. I just wanted to say thank you again for the hospitality you and your wife have shown. I’m especially glad for your tutelage.”

“Ah, don’t sweat it Morichika. I was a little worried about you being a half-youkai, but you’ve always been very civilised. Maybe a little too civilised, sometimes! It’s just too bad I can't convince you to stay away from the magic stuff.” He replied.

“Well, I do intend to be based in the Forest of Magic.” The silver haired man responded. “I would be

“Damn it, man. Why are you and Mirabelle both like this? You know how dangerous magic is. How likely it is to blow up in your face. Stop messing around with it, man.” Kirisame said, starting to turn red.

“Hey, take it easy, Kirisame. Morichika’s a grown man, he knows the risks.” The mustached man said placatingly.

“You can be foolish even if you’re grown.” the merchant said.

“That’s true, but Morichika here seems pretty prudent. I reckon he’ll be careful.” The clean shaven man pointed out.

Kirisame frowned and sighed, taking another sip of his whiskey.

“I’m just worried, you know. Me and Mira are gonna start trying for kids soon. What if one of ‘em picks up on that interest in shooting flames and conjuring shikigami? I can’t lose more of my family to that.”

The clean shaven fellow put a hand on Kirisame’s shoulder. “I understand why you’re scared. Kids… they’re wonderful, but you can never predict how they’ll turn out. But you gotta trust in yourself and in your wife to raise your child right.”

The mustached man ran a hand through his facial hair. “Well, you gotta discipline ‘em of course. Especially if it’s a boy!” The man laughed “But you also gotta be someone they trust. And hey, you got your wife too. The two of ya can split things up between you. Work together. But
The mustached man saw Motoori sat down across the room, a bookish looking woman in a bell-patterned kimono sat next to him. He raised a glass to the man, who raised one in return, a golden band on his finger shining in the light. The band had dulled somewhat with age, but it still gleamed. A good omen, the mustached man thought. Between the two was set a young boy, bearing Motoori’s brown hair and Suzuna’s features.

“Besides, you’ve got other families around, too. Don’t be afraid to lean on them for support. That goes for you too, Morichika”

The bespectacled man blinked in surprise.

“Ah, I don’t expect that to be a worry in the immediate future. I’m just fine keeping my own company.” Morichika deflected.

“You say that now, but one day the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen is going to walk into your life, and it will change everything.” The clean shaven fellow said jovially.

Morichika shrugged. “I suppose we shall see. I certainly don’t expect things to play out that way.”

“More drinks, sirs?” A waiter asked.

“Of course!” Three of the men said at once. Morichika just nodded.

And so the alcohol kept flowing, and so too did conversation.

---

Last Friday of March, Season 100
Hieda Mansion Garden

“Cheers!” Three glasses clinked together, the trio tipped their glasses back, the alcohol burning in their throats.

“Ah, this always hits the spot.” The mysterious woman said. She wore a great kasa upon her head, a veil covering her face. The woman had taken the last chair free in the garden, the place being packed to bursting.

The host and hostess were talking to Motoori’s son, the boy having suddenly become a man. Little lady Kotohime weaved between legs and under chairs as her beleaguered parents tried to prevent her from making mischief. Even the Hakurei shrine maiden had shown herself, though it seemed she had left her husband at home with young Reimu. The woman kept a vigilant eye on her surroundings; she seemed to be keeping an eye on the veiled woman especially.

Kirisame was a notable absence, but an expected one. His wife had been poorly since Marisa’s birth, and the man had of course been spending his time with his family.

“The Hiedas do always have some fine sake,” the clean shaven fellow agreed. His hair was as much salt as it was pepper, these days.

“They’ve got good Shochu, too,” the mustached man added. The bald spot on the man’s head had grown; there was no hope of hiding it with clever combing these days/

“Strong shochu!” The woman laughed.

“So, what brings you here, miss?” The mustached man asked. Most people remained within the safety of the human village, but there were other, smaller, less safe settlements outside of it as well. The mustached man might have asked if the lady were a monk, if not for her drinking like a fish in a desert.

The veiled woman laughed. “Well, I just love flower viewing festivals. It’s a good excuse to meet people. And to drink!” She giggled and hiccuped.

The clean shaven fellow tilted his head in concern. “Ah, perhaps it would be best if you don’t get… too drunk, miss.”

The veiled woman laughed again and slapped the fellow on his back. He stumbled: the woman was surprisingly strong, despite her size.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me, Mr geezer. I can hold my drink! And I’m strong too!” She said, flexing a bicep.

The mustached man laughed. “Well, if you’re that tough, guess there’s less to worry about!”

The lady smiled, the expression apparent even underneath her veil.

“Is all well?” A woman’s voice asked. The Hakurei shrine maiden had approached the trio, casting an eye to the strange woman.

“Nothin’ to worry ‘bout, Miss Hakurei!” The woman responded.

“We were just tellin’ this girl not to get too drunk. And she was just showin’ that she’s got the strength of an oni!” The mustached man explained.

“She’s just like old Motoori. Packs away a lot more power than you would expect.” The clean shaven fellow mused.

The Hakurei shrine maiden affixed the veiled woman with a stern look. “Well, so long as you don’t cause an issue, you can remain. But even if you are A- even if you’re as strong as an oni, I will not abide any brawling here. Understood?”

The veiled woman nodded twice. “No fightin’! I can do that!” She agreed readily.

“Besides, I don’t think anyone would cause trouble when you’re here. Human or youkai, you’d give ‘em a good thrashing!” The mustached man said.

“Yes. So try and have a good time while you’re here, Miss Hakurei. We appreciate the hard work you do, but you deserve to take some time to relax once in a while.” The clean shaven fellow added.

Hakurei smiled. It was a small, polite thing “Well, I’m glad to be appreciated. But don’t worry, I do take time to relax. Besides, ensuring the safety of everyone in the village is my second biggest pride and joy.”

The two men could infer what the first was.

“Oooh, what’s the first?” The veiled woman asked.

“It’s my Reimu, my precious baby girl” Hakurei said, her expression truly softening. “Ah, she’s taken the best of me and my husband. I think we’re the luckiest parents in the world.”

The clean shaven fellow laughed. “I said the exact thing when my daughter was born.”

The mustached man grinned. “I didn’t say the same thing when my son was young. I knew that my wife and I were the luckiest parents in the world.”

“Kids, they’re great and all. But do you know what’s even greater?” The veiled woman asked. “More drinks!”

And so the alcohol kept flowing.

---

Second Friday of May, Season 118
Geidontei

“Cheers!”

Two glasses clinked together. The duo tipped their glasses back, the alcohol burning in their throats.

“Ah, that always hits the spot.” the mustached man said. The top of his head was completely bald, though he retained his hair around the sides

“Ha, good sake is like the dawn, it’s beautiful no matter how many times you see it.” The clean shaven fellow mused. His grey hair rustled as he leaned back

“Settle down, Confucius,” the mustached man replied

For a time the two were quiet, focused on their food and their drink.

“Ha, it almost seems like yesterday when we were at the grand opening.” The mustached man reminisced.

“Since the days you had a full head of hair, you mean.” The clean shaven fellow joked.

“The days when your hair was black, is what I mean.” The mustached man countered.

“Hah. I suppose you never expect to be an old geezer until you suddenly are one.” The clean shaven fellow acknowledged.

“No, you truly don’t. You know, I saw my granddaughter the other day. In my mind, I can’t help but see her as a little girl, but she’ll be an adult soon enough. She’s always got her nose stuck in a book, and she almost lives at Motoori’s store” The clean shaven man said, smiling.

“Seems like she takes after someone I know. Let’s hope she won’t end up falling over anyone’s fences.” The mustached man smiled.

“That was once. Twenty years ago! I swear, you’ll forget about your own name before you forget about that!” The clean shaven fellow complained, though he smiled as well.

“You can count on it.Still, I understand where you’re coming from with your granddaughter. When I go to see my grandson, I think of the little bundle of joy who always tackled me to greet me, but now he’s twice my size! I hear that he's been learning some of the tricks of the trade with Kirisame.” The mustached man said

The clean shaven fellow had a moment of hesitation. “Didn’t he love youkai stories when he was a little boy? You sure Kirisame won’t lose it?”

The mustached man shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to have much interest in those stories these days. Besides, he’s never shown much interest in magic or magical items. I’ve told him to stay away from those topics either way.”

“Good. Kirisame’s been a little short ever since the thing with his daughter. I understand it, but I wouldn’t want your grandkid to get caught up in it.” The clean shaven fellow clarified.

“I had hoped his wife would be able to support him in raising that little girl but…” The mustached man sighed. “It was a damn shame.”

Science stretched for a long moment. The mustached man spoke again

“You can never see how things will turn out. I remember seeing you one Friday in that old pub, Sake wa Tomodachi. I just went there because I liked the name, you know? Sake is a friend, a funny thing to name a pub. I know I agreed to meet with you after-”

“- but you never figured we would still be meeting and shooting the breeze together decades later?” The clean shaven fellow finished. “Aye. I admit, I thought we would meet once or twice and then things would peter out”

Okunoda walked over, Geidontei’s poster girl standing out among the sea of geezers within Geidontei.

“Would you like anything more?” the girl asked.

And so, the alcohol flowed, and so did the conversation.

Preface: I'll have to start this by saying I'm not exactly sure if this fits as a standalone story, but I feel it is also kind of self-contained. The major characters here are from my entry in the previous Flashy Exhibition, "Burakumin". And, yeah, it really only features them so if you're not too interested in OC stuff then feel free to skip this. Oh, and there's a bit of suggestive stuff towards the end.

---

After hours.

A dark, sinewy arm slips between long curtains, parting them carefully. Aging eyes peer into the cold, alien world brought about by strange and late hours. For a moment, all they conjure is a swirling current of inky blackness, interrupted by errant blots of light stubbornly clinging to vision. They strain to make sense of things. It clears by the second, forming familiar brown trails, black silhouettes and white margins. The shortest day of the year is past, but the world seems content to grow colder. Minding to grab his hat and boots of thick straw, the old man crosses the threshold.

Night lingers in a languid pace. The winds are gentle and flakes fall like feathers, and all about him roof and street are blanketed in piles of pillowy white. He figures to let the mood settle into him, drinking of the softly nibbling air as he ponders the dark grey of the murky sky. Endless clouds reign tonight, robbing him of the stars. Only a great ink-like splotch of silver light manages to shine through its cotton-like tufts, and he can but wonder if its portentous power too is suffocated.

Steady, well travelled feet make certain of the uncertain ground. A real hazard, he's had the misfortune to learn, for someone advancing in their years. A little slip had landed him a few weeks' stay in that bamboo clinic, leaving him to the tender mercies of harebrained nurses by the dozen as they enacted what was ominously dubbed "physical therapy" upon him, and all under the steely gaze of its mysterious doctor. All in all, a begrudgingly convincing treatment. He's made good on his plan not to return, if only not to disappoint her. And all that trouble at the behest of one very insistent kappa.

A smile grows fondly. It had been her fault too, but the old man never had the heart to wave it at her face. He was already on the ground nursing his numbing arse, when the poor girl's knees bit the earth as his did and she began to senselessly beg, promising to carry him to the place by herself, vagrant guide notwithstanding. He was as exasperated as he was in pain, wondering if she was simply deathly afraid of the Hakurei herself getting wind of it. And after everything was done, he found himself returning to an awfully touched-starved girl.

He'd taken up fowling again around that time, he recalls; his tender backside would not have found the rigours of autumn's harvest agreeable. A year has passed since and he's still here in good health.

Yet, lately, he feels an inexplicable shade hanging over his usual disregard. In those moments when he is utterly alone, in the dark, his mind would run. He thinks a lot of things, things he'd normally taken in stride or for granted. A shadow cast from somewhere he could not see, like a yearning for something he's forgotten. However much he agonises, he cannot yet place it. He shivers a sigh and looks behind.

There the Sitting Duck stands. Inside, its menagerie of visitors by midnight had seemed not much different to the townfolk. His short time there was rather uneventful, no different from the evening hours, except for the missing fixture of a reserved crimson-haired waitress fleeting about. He figures he's probably one of the only two or three the Ma'am has let in on of her clandestine business, though he's never pushed to get involved with it. He's caught a rare glimpse into the unknown tonight, no doubt uncanny to the ordinary villager, but it's evidently brought about a different reaction from him.

The echoing clatter of tableware, the pleasant buzz of mild chatter, the warm sights and smells of a gathering—they desperately latch onto him like a faded memory. A memory of a time when the fear of the dark was impressed upon him by frightful tales from his elders; when father warned him to not fall to the whims overly-friendly kappa and tanuki as he gorged on preserved sweetfish while mother simply shook her head with a subtle, knowing smile; when he heard the other boys trading sordid tales of humans consorting with yōkai, fancying to bag one themselves. All those years ago, come winter, they had gathered round the sunken hearth by day and night, for work and leisure, food and drink; to find warmth, to make merry. And with each successive step, with every passing year, there's just a little less of it.

Family.

He halts, feeling the weight of some two hundred seasons about to pile on, catching himself at the precipice. Still he wonders: Do they know this too, do they think of it—these unknowable yōkai? Do they seek the same solace as he, or any other person? He feels he should know the answer. The girl comes to mind again and a hankering to reach her floods him to a deluge.

A bitterly chill mist rushes past abruptly, sounding much like a voice, reminding him of his human frailty as if to dissuade. He ignores the feeling and tightens his padded coat. It's about time to leave.

Street by street, more of this strange world opens up to him. Most households are fast asleep by now, but he comes to eyes with a lone elder, sitting comfortably heaped in her layers and contemplating the season much as he did. Not too far, a few children are surprisingly still up to play with the paved snow about their houses. They wave at him soon as he passes while the old woman gives a nod, which he returns. He disappears into an alley.

Cutting now through paths lonely and pitch black, he swiftly reaches the thoroughfare connecting the western gate. Here, the marching labour of progress is plainly witnessed. Under his feet the sidewalks of the westward road are newly cobbled with evened stones, and overhead the dormant forms of electrical streetlights make a line towards the gate, all sanctioned by the Moriya Shrine with the hard-bargained approval of the nearby Hieda Estate. A company of kappa technicians had practically settled here as they were set to work with unparalleled speed under the auspices of the Shrine, with the goddess Yasaka herself insuring as their taskmaster.

There was a whole hubbub over it. Scores of curious children hoping the kappa have brought their toys with them, a whole host of sleep-deprived guards erecting barriers and redirecting traffic, and uncountable lookers-on busying themselves by mucking up said traffic. There was even that umbrella, tentatively keeping vigil over unsupervised children until she too began plying her hammer onto the installments, to everyone's abject horror. Over them all Kanako had made a spirited show of barking orders at the technicians, directing them from one end to the other. The old man peeked around for his kappa of course, but no luck. She was never as eager for their larger, showier ventures. The girl seems happy enough tinkering with household amenities and minor explosives.

Things old and new stand together now in this small stretch, and though the sight may hold great interest and hope for the future, it always comes to him with a sense of distance that, at times, grow forlorn. He accompanied his father when he grew old enough, traversing roads half-crowded as today when it was all sand and dirt, and leaving under the shine of stone lanterns when they were freshly cut and free of moss. It was in those days where he first learned of the great movement of humanity, of hundreds of bodies heading in all directions, tending to every sort of profession by day, chasing all manner of transient pleasures come night. And In all this time, it remains odd to think himself as part of it.

On each side the timeless view of shops and rowhouses remain, stretching like slumbering dragons, faintly smoking from latticed nostrils. The neighbourhood is scant with light at these hours, but an inn down the road is alight and unusually festive. A gathering of men, varying in ages, crowding about the entrance and spilling out to the street. Perhaps the local watch at rest, mingling with those staying at the inn, carrying news from the far side. Ghostly tendrils snake above from their disparate groups, each huddling around their own set of hibachi. The frosty air is hazy with chatter and the smell of tobacco.

He patters by discreetly, minding to keep himself low as he takes whatever he can of the words flying by. They are the usual: Business, crop worries, familial matters, sightings and the like; even the occasional gossip regarding a certain bar in the deeper town. He's never even seen the damn place but from the sheer number of accounts, it may as well be a den of yōkai—now there's a joke to be made. But all typical things, for the better.

Sad as it may seem, it's one of the only ways he cares to keep himself informed, aside from old newspapers, and though he likes to think he's fully chosen of his own solitude, the truth can be less fortunate, and every now and then the illusion cracks. A few eyes from the older gentlemen have been trailing him, and he feels he might recognise them if he looks back, but nothing so far has been said. It's a tired dance at this point, and nobody is eager to throw away the peace for nothing. Just as he clears them however, a brash voice—one of the younger men—excitedly broaches the topic with absent grace.

"Hey, ain't he that gravedigger from outside? When did he get so puffed up?"

"Shut up," an older voice shushes him through clenched teeth.

"Idiot," another one, followed by a smack. "He's protected."

That's certainly news to the old man. He never gets where their strange ideas come from; it's even funny at times. No, they never prick as much as those who spurn him away when he means to help. A few awkward coughs and grumbles, and the group is happy enough to let it go. The old man carries on as he has been doing, keeping himself towards the nearing exit.

Immense doors of old and stout wood, fettered with supports of blackened iron, lay partly open under the great roof of a doorway; rarely are they ever completely barred, except for the worst of seasons or incidents. It's operated rather simply with grouded wheels along the bottom helped by its well-maintained hinges. The place is well lit until dawn.

At present, it's populated mostly by yawning armoured men propped up by spears. All known faces, except one. Two mancatchers lie unused against a wall and, nearby, a young monk looks to be meditating under the shadow of the arch. A gunman stands ready on the flank though his lengthy cord is unlit. Their officer, still a man of thirty, starts from his stupor when he catches the old man passing by.

"Ah," he bows in greeting, "not staying the night?" His grim face and forceful brows are redeemed by a disarming smile.

The old man shakes his head wordlessly as he surveys the road outside. There are settlements beyond, but he would be walking in certain darkness. A small foldable lantern is procured from within his jacket and he promptly heads for one of the burning urns. Pulling a candlestick from the mouth, he lights the wick directly with the crackling flames, before sticking it back inside. His eyes narrow a moment as it glows through the paper, after which he grunts with satisfaction. A hearty swig of his shiny new gourd, smacking his lips at the waxy aftertaste, and he begins to amble on his way.

The sole new face, a boy who seems only a few years past temple school, could only stare at the old man's display. The others, monk included, are enjoying his reaction meanwhile. Brimming with a youthful sort of curiosity, he asks, "Who the hell's that?"

The officer chucks a knowing grin. "Just a man." He slips a finger inside his junior's oversized dō and pulls at its leather backing. "We got these thanks to folk like him," he elucidates much as a teacher would, "Never forget that."

"Huh," the boy begins to wonder. With bemused interest and a little worry, he silently observes as the old man sashays into the deep of winter's night.

The officer still possesses a measure responsibility however, and yells to the disappearing man, "Straight home, y'hear! Who knows what's out there tonight."

There is silence, until:—

"Okay, okay! Good night!"

The old man does not stay true to his word.

Treading through the snow-strewn roads dividing the open fields, he instead stops by a particular ditch along the northwestern edge. There would have been plenty of quaint sights along the way but, shrouded as they are, the night offers sad little. Nearby, a shabby post warns of wandering bears. The first scatterings of a great forest stalk about, and though the charcoal sky has swallowed it from sight, the old man knows that spire of the mountain lies beyond. Here he sets his lantern down, waiting.

A dormant rice field spreads before him, collecting snow as the soil renews. By the far margin is an old-fashioned farmhouse with its steep thatched roof layered with white. Late as it is, a soft glow bleeds through paper panels. A door is curiously ajar.

He's noticed how much quieter it is here, now. It wasn't so when he was tending to the harvest, and much less summer. Neither crickets nor cicadas sing anymore; their littering husks buried by winter. The frogs have burrowed and the fireflies are gone too while the throngs of men, beasts and birds make do. Such is how things go. But what to do if snow piles too thick, winds blow too strong? Out here, huddling the fire all day, alone, subsisting on rations of dried goods for the better part of a month, is dreadfully dull. He begins to dream of livelier prospects.

By the seventh minute, he is swooning for a hot, citrusy bath. He has a mind to head to the nearest tree. Whether from bodily fatigue or his incessantly wandering mind, the thought of surrendering himself to the stillness is suddenly a terrible temptation. His haphazard plan will not see the day, however. The audacity of his action did not pass unnoticed when he left the gates.

"Oughf!" the old man sprays, loud and sudden.

He feels all the air leave his lungs when the all world around him is suddenly spinning. One moment he was reminiscing of snow apples so vividly he could suddenly smell them, the next he suffers the savage blow of a spiteful god as the weight of what must be the entire world crashes into him—specifically his right side.

Apples.

An imposing sense of déjà vu grips him all too late. His right foot is already flying under him but, by sheer grit, his left remains standing. Turning with the momentum, he catches himself again with his right. The world begins to settle again, though he's helplessly awake now. Catching his breath, he turns to face the only lout that would've struck him.

"Heeeeeey!"

The familiarly sunny note of a certain girl rings in his still spinning ears. He cranes his neck down only to be welcomed by a thick pair of mittens waving uncomfortably close to his face. Apple-scented hair, a blue wintercoat and a battering ram of a backpack. The girl is the same as ever. Even the audacious grin that crowns this particular mischief is faithfully plastered on her. A pressure rises to his temples but he resists.

"And now you do this..." he settles to a quiet grumble.

"A-ah, I! I—" she begins to stammer. Whatever mind she has to explain herself is swiftly cut down however.

"I'm not getting any younger y'know?"

Amber eyes swell a moment before wilting. "Mm," the kappa nods meekly, the fight in her evaporated. Even her cap seems to droop. The old man is not one to raise his voice, she knows, but he can be awfully dense. Or maybe vindictive,—she isn't sure at times—like when he kept a polite distance between them after the *one* bad fall, leaving her hanging for almost the entire season. "You don't have to put it that way," she turns her little nose away. Her hands pull tighter on the straps of her bag.

The slightness of her voice shakes the old man sober. In his constant bouts of brooding and worrying, he has become remiss with his words. He reaches for her covered hand as she sulks, hoping she will respond to his touch. A lame gesture, he knows, but he's accepted that he'll ever be hopeless with apologies. His bare hand contacts the waterproofed material, slowly finding the nook of her fingers to hang on to. There's a pulsing warmth within. He feels her stiffen at first, but she gradually yields to him, releasing from the strap.

He squeezes her hand and, with a sincere fondness, says, "I'm always glad to see you."

The pout on girl's face begins to harden, but not at all in a bad way. A few seconds more and she cracks, snatching her hand back and threatening to pummel him with the same. "I'm not a kid!" she whines, her cheeks apple-red and full with barely repressed mirth. "You and your mother are the same."

"I was waiting for you," he adds, now with a hint of cheek.

Something ignites again within those sparking ambers. "I was waiting for you," the girl returns his words with a returning fire, pointing an accusing finger. She turns her head away childishly, unloading, "Didn't want to disturb you though. Looked like you were having so much fun talking to...whoever that was back there." She harrumphs, crossing her arms expressively. "New-hire-girl," she spits cattily.

To her dismay, he beams. "Ah! Miss Izayoi, I believe." A temporary help, as it appears, for when the Ma'am mans the late hours. It took him a bit to work out who she was when they spoke. She seems a great mystery, but even the old man is no stranger to tales of the lakeside mansion. It's not at all that he forgot to ask. He prattles on, "She was showing me her gun. How come nothing I've heard said she's that tall? Ah, don't tell anyone, but it gave me a good fright when she ducked through the doorframe. I thought that eight—"

Every rational, concious process within the kappa had stopped since the name was dropped. Her eyes have grown to saucers by now and in her complete bafflement she utters a single word that comes out rather flatly:—

"What."

He stumbles, "Y-yes?"

"No!" she stamps back, forcing a mental reboot, though a gradual confusion markedly clouds her initial certainty. "...What?"

"She said she's from the mansion, so..."

He can almost hear the gears in the poor kappa's little head struggle and smoke. Her hands pull down on her cap as her features contort a harsh way, and he wonders if her ears will start steaming. She's terribly open. His jittery fingers conspire for a sneaky pat, treacherously reaching for her trembling dome but he is forced to rapidly pull the reins when her eyes become anew with clarity.

Thoughts wheel rapidly in the kappa's industrious brain, until a little-known fact hits her. There has been, within the info-trading circles, the strange rumour of a new human hireling spotted in and around the vampire's lair. This may well confirm it, and from what the kappa saw of her, between the fair skin, pale hair and similar outfits, it's not out there that she would be mistaken for Sakuya by those less informed. Another, more devious thought arises. She is wrong about something—about not turning this against him. An awful grin threatens to wrench her lips apart, one she knows she cannot fight, so she focuses on making it in innocuous; an art she's taken to as well as any kappa might to stalking. At once she straightens.

"Right! Yeah, Izayoi," she stiffly corrects herself, gleaming her teeth all the while. Her eyes are slammed shut, for she cannot trust them in this moment. "Whatever!" she cheerfully pushes the matter aside, quite literally, by clocking his shoulder. Something compels her to the edge of the road then. With a lofty show of her hands on her hips and from a great heave of her more-than-modest chest, a laughter bellows out, roaring and boisterous, filling all the dark around them and echoing into the great ether.

The old man is initially taken aback, but he finds in it in himself to join her with an awkward chuckle. He's done enough damage as it is, he feels, and it would be rude look a gift horse in the mouth. To his surprise however, it doesn't take much for it to turn to genuine. He lets loose. With every beat of passing breath he feels his chest unwind, followed by the rest of his tangled being. He is once again swept away by her whim, and he can only be grateful.

The girl sees it too, from the disappearing slump of his beaten shoulders to the easing lines of his still winsome face and the carefree curl of his slightly chapped lips. The old man is a spectre given to life again. The mood settling, she asks pleasantly, "What are we doing here anyways?"

"Just keeping an eye out." His vague words are coupled with the conspicuous raise of his eyebrows. The girl furrows hers with equal suspicion, but he does not budge to her pressure.

Groaning, the old man finally drops beside his lantern, motioning for her after. She rolls her eyes and, with a single movement, simply lets the bag carve a snowy crater, causing the old man to shield himself from the impact. She joins him, but only as far as putting the light between them, standing near.

"I'm fine here," she decides nonchalantly.

He doesn't mind, as long as he can see her—and she never minds his staring. Her bright ginger hair, ever a permanent blaze of autumn, is kept longer these days, though she always wears it short outdoors, parted into two tails and each looped onto itself. The stretch of her forehead wholly exposed, which he finds adorable. It fits her cheery face, especially when she turns red as an apple. Her padded uniform now covers up to her wrists and more of her legs, where her thick boots peek from under her pocket lined skirt. Her cap sits faithfully on top, always more to one side than the other. The scarf however is easily the most garish thing hanging on her. A voluminous piece of fabric that, thanks to her stature, looks more a shroud or cloak. It must keep her warm, inside and out.

There are the little things from the passage of many seasons, but the kappa girl herself has not grown an inch in all their years. It seems at a glance that time has been infinitely kind to her more than it could ever have to him. But the old man knows not all wounds are carved in flesh. The moment lingers, when he finally ups his chin to the thing. "Never getting rid of that, are you?"

The girl drags a worried sigh. "Something's really up with you," she shakes her head, but a stillness soon comes over her. It's a strangely solemn moment, a wilful silence as if passing a prayer. "Never," she affirms as she nuzzles tenderly into the woolen fabric, searching for a long-lost fragrance. "It's a gift from my best friend."

When her eyes open, those unsettled pools dart to somewhere out in the black. It takes no time for the old man to place it. Home.

By his own memory, not a winter has gone without it on her for the longest time. The pattern remains strange to his eyes but it is an undeniable eye-catcher. He's always wondered where his mother acquired such a fabric in her time. Tartan, she called it; a dizzying pattern of purple blocks and intersecting blue bands, with crossing white and golden strands. A familiar set of colours by now, inviting a certain suspicion that dogs the edges of his mind. He has remained silent of it. Perhaps it's not in his place to know.

The rest of his thoughts fizzle when a warm, naked hand settles comfortably behind his head. He didn't hear the girl sidling closer. Slow and steadily the hand—her left, he realises—begins to comb through the wispy strands of his grey hair, back and forth, side to side. There is no pride at stake here, and he doesn't obsess over such fruitless things. He leans deeper into her touch. A frail giggle escapes her, which sounds to him flighty as early sunrays dancing on the sleepy wetlands. She must have the softest curl to her lips, and he fears to break it.

"Do you miss her?"

Her hand stops and his heart leaps. He would curse himself if she pulls away. But she doesn't. He feels her weight lean onto his back instead, and her hand leaving only for two arms to wrap around him and tighten. Her breath warms his cheek while, all around him, a sweet scent of apples begins to haze. She moves even closer, laying her head against his neck, and that's when he feels it: Her smile hasn't left her.

"Of course I do," she whispers. They stay just like that, gently swaying against an absent wind. She must seem like a lone, little kappa swept in the entirety of the world's floods, and he the rock she holds on to. A painfully cloying sentiment, but one she can tolerate for now.

It still astonishes him how easy they are with each other. He must have been a bother to her as a child—needlessly curious yet prone to silence. But they were thick as thieves and he would not leave her without a promise of meeting again. And though father had been understandably wary, mother ceaselessly fawned over them, to the kappa's constant embarrassment. They drifted for some time, but as his independence grew so too did their time together again, free to do all sorts of things. A faint heat collects around his ears.

It's only an inordinate time later when he hears the click of her tongue, followed by her grunting, "What now?" Her arms leave him with a heavy reluctance.

The sudden thrash of groaning branches and crashing snow fully alerts him. Out in the fields, the dark bulk of some fuzzy mass seems to have tumbled out from the far hedge. He spies a look at the kappa's face above, only to find her already glued to her binoculars. She notes the thing is definitely alive when a hoarse, beastly groan echoes from it.

It's unmistakably a large bear, dusted with white and, according to her, rubbing its bum. Its weight is thrown around carelessly as it walks, and for a good minute it proceeds to frolic amidst the snow, sliding and rolling before a sudden awareness leads it to gingerly skip for the farmhouse. The promise of a disaster seems to hang, but the whimsical interloper appears to be a polite one as well, waving at the old man—to the astonishment of his little partner—and, standing on its hind legs, steps from the stone riser onto the veranda, one foot at a time. It slides the ajar door fully open and slips inside soundlessly, minding to close the door behind it.

"What just happened?"

"The wife," he states plain as day.

Her bewilderment leaves with a sigh. She rolls her eyes, "Oh, right." Therianthropes. "They're everywhere, huh."

"A lot of things are, if one means to look," he finds himself preaching, making the girl cock an eyebrow. The act feels strange on his tongue, but he doesn't regret it. "She grew up with a white wolf friend. They sneak off for drinks, nights like these. I just keep an eye that she gets home." A half-smile unconsciously grows on him as he explains. His eyes are distant yet empathetic when he says, "They're practically sisters, way I heard it."

"That's..."

She is uncertain how it seems. Cute? Sad? It's a fair bit of both, she feels. Yet, more than either, there's something she finds incredibly admirable about it. The feeling spreads through all her being, absolutely miring her in it, and she feels she is buzzing when all her hairs pull at her skin. To still keep true, despite everything. It reminds her of something precious.

The old man is reaching for his lantern when she abruptly stops him. A pensive air grows about her as she asks, "Are you working later?"

He perks with interest, settling back down and thinking a second before shaking his head. "No, but I'm thinking of visiting the shrine," he says.

"Ah!" her voice hikes up unexpectedly. She catches herself after and coughs. "I can go with you. If you want me to." From her expectant voice and restless eyes, the kappa might as well dig her toes and shuffle her feet in the snow, but he knows she'd drag him under before that happens. "I'll have to leave by evening," a momentary dip in her contained excitement, before it springs up again, "But just a few days! The last few. Then I'll stay for the rest of winter. With you." There's a tender look as she ends her piece, a hope sprouting in her for many more winters.

It simply tickled the old man watching her fidget but now his jaw is slack over the crunch of shuffling snow. Unbelievably, the girl is doing just that. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, even. His voiceless mouth twitches disbelievingly, wedged between piling amusement and incredulity, until a chortle breaks through his rickety dam. "Now something's up with you," he teases the blushing maiden.

The poor girl is struck dead silent, before her eyes harden until they seem to smoke—and she explodes. "You are unbelievable!"

She makes a grab for the defenseless man's shoulders and gives him a good shake, but it only feeds his laughter. The shy rose of her cheeks turn a lively red again. She herself begins to sputter, "This is what I get for pouring my heart out."

The girl eventually settles down to a sniffle and she makes to leave, but not without a last say in her favour. As she turns, the old man catches in her leering eyes a glint of something less than innocent, and he quickly feels he may still be in danger. The girl seems demure enough keeping her hands behind her but there is an inexplicable sway to her hips now as she moves.

She begins fretting over her contraption of a bag when she reaches it, checking every other pocket and as if it had just been purloined. Without warning she starts bending over her hips as if to check deeper inside. The edges of her tongue skirt ride up with the action, first revealing the length her boots and then, teasingly, the pleasing contours of gossamer black material hugging a pair of shapely legs. In an instant the old man is reminded that, however the kappa may look, she is in fact a woman.

"Tonight, then?"

She catches his ogling of course, bearing a smirk all too knowing to not be intended, but he can only balk at the shameless kappa beginning to pull on the skirt herself. The frilly lining dance dangerously over her thighs. However much he feels it unbecoming of his age, the sight forces into his mind salacious details of their most private matters. Her eyes brimful with glee never leave his, daring them to stay.

It's unfair. Even at the edge of light, those two orbs effortlessly radiate from her otherwise shaded features. They glitter of fiery gold, catching the meagre light in strange and enticing ways. There is something there now too, behind their still facade. Waiting for him. It's almost...predatory. Eyes made to stalk in the depths of rivers and nights. How bright they were in the madly bubbling water, with only the feel of her once larger hand to guide him. How they smolder now in the darkness of their room, keeping him rooted, inching closer and closer until her breath tickles his lips.

A shiver descends along his spine. It's the old man's turn to be bashful—he shies away, musing the dirt as he feels the warmth in his pulsing ears flood to his face. He sits by himself a moment, closing his eyes as a process turns within. Ultimately, with a hopeless chuckle that sounds of complete resignation, the old man relents.

A slow nod, and he submits. "Tonight."

A truly rapturous grin digs into the girl's cheeks, pushing them against her narrowing eyes, and with her face still upside down. Whatever else that seems to almost spill he would not see, for she quickly turns to slip on her bag. When their eyes meet again he's not at all surprised to see her back to that bubbly girl he's known all his life, innocently raising her eyes as if nothing happened.

He doesn't resist anymore. He knows he will succumb to those vivacious eyes again, hanging on to her every giggle as well as her touch, as has happened in a hundred moons, through all their cherished years. He wonders if those years will be forgotten too, in as much time. Maybe not. He could languish over a lot of things but all he desires in this moment is to be pulled from them.

As if to answer, she pulls her right hand naked into the freezing air. She blows a long, warm breath and, sweetly, she beckons, "Come on. Your big sister wants to walk home with you."

Her words seem to tease but the eased lids over her dewy ambers produce a glassy effect; he can see within that she speaks sincerely, quivering with no small affection. She holds her hand out to him, ever to wait patiently.

The old man reaches back. She doesn't shiver when their fingers touch, he notices. Rather, she prolongs the contact, deliberately sliding her smaller, softer palm against his as her thumb runs across his papery skin and, with a grip he can never hope to match, pulls him up to her. Her fingers proceed to wedge possessively between his, securing their place, and though tinged with a slight embarrassment, the old man allows himself to relive that childish comfort and in the reassuring strength of her hold. She means not to let go; of him and of her last promise to her friend.

So they walk, hand in hand all the way to their far dwelling, where they warm themselves with hot tea and light supper over shared beddings and a kappa heater. She retires herself of her layers as he prepares, unraveling her hair and wrapping her own small frame in a loose robe. Together they sup, as they touch, embracing in the pleasant quietude of their lantern-lit twilight. And in the low light, a fair deal of unspoken things occur between them—eye to eye, skin to skin, sigh on sigh—before they fade breathless into a deep, restful sleep. Not even the pleasant land of dreams feel it proper to rouse them from that fathomless bliss.

When the low sun curves its way along the southern horizon, the old man awakens gently to cool, crisp air, and the scent of sweaty apples and dewy petrichor.

FIN

In a corner of the garden, under the wooden porch, sat a rectangular box. It was protected from the warm summer rain that had been falling all morning. The air was dense and moisture clung onto most surfaces, particularly onto skin. I sat in another room close to the box, enjoying a cup of matcha. The aromatic and wisp-like vapor that wafted from my cup seemed eager to rise up and I imagined that it sought to prove itself by countering the downward motion of rain. I thought about that and many other things besides as I stared out through the open sliding door, through the fine sheet of water, past the plants and walls and out into the vivid green of the endless bamboo that surrounded our home.

---

Half a year ago, when the garden had been covered by a layer of powdery snow, I had also been drinking a cup of tea and staring out while lost in thought. I was wearing a pale and thin unlined kimono, one that allowed the frigid winter air to penetrate it unchallenged. I shivered involuntarily from time to time but resisted the urge to put on a coat. I must have looked like a fool. Eirin sipped from her own teacup, offering no comment, as she wore an impassive look on her face.

“Don’t you think the moon looks lovely tonight?” I asked. It was not quite yet full but it appeared large and brilliant in the night sky, its silvery light giving it a dignified, if aloof, look. I had been wondering for some time how the inhabitants of Earth felt on nights like those. I could not decide on whether or not they even bothered to look up at the sky on most nights.

Seemingly reading my thoughts, Eirin responded, “Many different cultures ascribe to the moon magical properties and even go as far as to think it as a mysterious, unknowable, entity. For the most part, for most of these people, the moon acts as a sort of mirror to their own feelings and thoughts.”

“Hm, is that so?” Eirin’s wisdom and depth of knowledge was the sort of thing I normally deferred to without hesitation but there was something about it all that failed to make me uncritically accept her words. Maybe it was because we had once lived in the Lunar Capital and it felt like we ought to have a more unique and nuanced perspective. We had emigrated to Earth long ago but had only fairly recently began to feel like we truly belonged. I surprised myself by realizing that I wasn’t sure about how I felt about the moon. It wasn’t like it was a subject I avoided thinking about but it also wasn’t something that had any real sort of sway over my daily life much anymore. It was because of that distance and lack of relevance that ambiguity had blossomed in my heart and mind. There was no real reason to pull everything apart into distinct threads that I could measure and appraise at length.

I drank my tea as I gave the issue some more thought. The warmth from the tea contrasted nicely with the prickling feeling of the icy air against my skin. Even though I couldn’t catch a cold—much less die—I was still normal enough to not enjoy most forms of discomfort. It had been on a whim that I had decided to not wear more appropriate clothes; a sudden notion of wanting to really feel the night and the moment as directly as possible had overtaken me. I smiled to myself as I thought that I might as well go outside after finishing the tea. I could examine how the skin on my hands compared to the snow—long ago I had heard a poem which meant to flatter and had compared my complexion to that of fresh snow, with the same ability to capture the light and hint at undefined mystery. The moonlight was as good as a light source as any and, if it reflected feelings and thoughts like Eirin said, maybe it would reveal something novel and interesting.

Eirin watched silently as I hastily finished my cup of tea and stood up. I excused myself rather brusquely and sat at the edge of the porch, crossing my legs. I stuck out my hands, exposing them to the light. I noted with some satisfaction that they were close to the color of snow. I held them up and observed how the moonlight made my skin seem almost limpid and I could easily distinguish the thin blue veins spooled out just below the skin. I wiggled my fingers around and watched how bits of flesh seemed to become taut or relax in near-instantaneous response.

I was conscious of a nearby rabbit—one of the manyinaba who lived with us—sitting on the porch, watching me intently with its small red eyes standing out amidst its white fluffy coat. Seeing that, I at once decided that that rabbit was probably closer to the color of snow. If it had chosen to hop into the garden it it would disappear entirely as a result, aided by the ambiguous light. The thought pleased me in a strange sort of way and it helped drive my thoughts towards something more conclusive.

Silk. That was what the moonlight reminded me of! I felt the top of my hands and then rubbed them together, enjoying the depths granted them by the shadow of night. With a small laugh, I plunged my hands into the snow below and invited the cold to bite into me without relent.

I returned to Eirin with my hands reddened by the snow. More tea had been poured and I clasped the warm cup firmly, feeling my blood flow in a rush.

“I know what I want to try doing once spring comes around,” I told her.

“Oh, and what would that be, Kaguya?” she asked as her lips formed into a slight smile, her grey eyes catching the light and softening into a color not too unlike silk.

---

I was unsure how Eirin managed it but as winter gave way to spring a pair of small mulberry trees had been planted in our garden. I hadn’t witnessed the transplanting process and had simply woken up to find the new arrivals off to the side near the wall, spaced a respectful distance away from the bamboo forest proper. I asked Reisen about it as she served me breakfast.

“Princess Kaguya, you know that Master has her ways,” she said, a mix of pride and delight in her words. I could have pressed further and compelled her to tell me what she knew. Instead, I let her have her fun. I knew that she enjoyed acting a little bit haughty when it came to Eirin. It was a heartfelt, though a little misguided, display of affection and respect. I had never witnessed it personally but I suspected that she would strike an identical tone when talking about me to a stranger. As far as she was concerned, those who lived at Eientei, our secluded home, possessed superior qualities well worth honoring. I did not disabuse her of the notion but neither did I agree. I didn’t really think about things in such a way.

I moved past her attitude, instead asking, “Do you know anything about taking care of trees?”

“Not especially,” Reisen’s sense of superiority dissipated at once. She took a step back and I kept my eye on her very long hair as it swayed behind her—it was even longer than my hair and had a different sort of luster, likely owing to its much lighter color. She was dressed in her usual clothes, and wore a carrot-shaped accessory that was clipped confidently onto her necktie. The bright color contrasted with the more muted colors of her blouse and was close to matching that of her skirt.

“I have some experience,” I said, thinking of the bonsai that I tended to every day, “but I’m not confident that I’ll be able to take care of it on my own. Especially after its leaves come in and I have to pick them.”

“Pick them?” she asked, cocking her head slightly.

“I suppose Eirin didn’t tell you why I wanted the trees,” I said, feeling it was my turn to feel a little superior. Fair was fair. “Among the many qualities of the mulberry there is one in particular I’m interested in: the leaves are the ideal meal for silkworms.”

I had already decided long before the trees had been planted that Reisen would help me in my new project. The inaba weren’t as reliable as she was and it didn’t seem right to do it all on my own. Not only could I do with more company but the workload would be easier with a pair of helping hands. And, well, I had also thought, there was something a little sad about taking care of living things and making decisions about their ultimate fate without anyone else being involved.

---

Reisen had protested when I had recruited her, saying that she was afraid of messing things up if she were involved. It was unexpectedly meek of her. She had been trained to be tenacious and rise to the challenge but her previous existence had little practical relevance to her current life. She willingly stayed with us and did what she did because it felt right to her or out of simple affection. That meant she couldn’t bring herself to refuse me. With just a minimal amount of prodding she agreed to help out. Reisen prepared herself as best she could. Like me, she read up on both mulberries and silkworms and was anxious for spring to begin in earnest and get to work.

The days became milder and the sun warmed the earth more generously. It was soon after that the first signs of life were visible in the trees. Leaves emerged slowly at first but then in ever-larger clumps in the span of a couple of weeks. Those trended towards being oval-shaped and had a fresh fragrance that was redolent with the season. Things were swiftly progressing and we invested ourselves fully into the venture.

I discussed the habitat with Reisen and left it up to her to procure a wooden box—close in size to a chest but comparable in shape to candy box with a sturdy lid—to which we added internal partitions and little shelves with holes. Our theoretical knowledge compelled us to make sure that there was adequate airflow. Additionally, we placed in a fibrous mesh of straw and other materials on top of the interior space so that sunlight and moonlight could both come in in equal measure while also keeping out creatures that might wish to disrupt the nest.

Eirin did not comment about our preparations but, when the time was right, she produced a small bag that was full of silkworm eggs. These were small and looked more like yellowish round seeds than eggs. It was difficult to imagine that bugs could be born from them but we did as we had studied and placed them in their new home. We waited anxiously for several days, checking the box regularly. I felt nervous and half-expected some disaster to strike before they hatched and, though she didn’t say anything, I could tell that Reisen was having similar thoughts by the way her shoulders stiffened whenever we made our checks. It would have been disastrous if our experiment ended before it could truly begin. But then, at last, our fears proved unfounded. On a particularly warm spring day, close to beginning of summer, the first eggs began to hatch and the larvae came to life.

Those young silkworms were small and weird and hid themselves under the leaves that we placed out for them. They were cold to the touch and had a smell indistinguishable from the mulberry leaves. That made sense, of course, but something about their demeanor was off-putting; Reisen said with a laugh that they reminded her of the nobles on the moon who were too self-absorbed to acknowledge others and then she quickly reddened when she made eye contact with me, realizing that what she had said could very well have applied to me. Or, more precisely, to the me from all that time ago. I did not say anything to her but did not take offense, finding that I more or less agreed with her.

I thought about the aristocratic bearings of our silkworms often enough while we picked fresh leaves and then sliced them up for their consumption. The silkworms became a little less shy over time, nibbling ever more from the edges of the leaves as they steadily grew in size. They were pale with black dots on the side of their segmented bodies and the occasional bands of a blueish hue that made me think of my own hand on that winter night and the blood that ran underneath. They weren’t the kind of creature that could show appreciation for our labor but—at times—it felt like I could understand them just a little. They were mostly sedate and gave us no real trouble. In fact, every couple of days the silkworms would fall into a deep sleep that would make them appear almost dead. I knew from my reading that that would be the case but it was still striking to see them so utterly helpless. Reisen seemed to think so too and she made a passing remark how they seemed incapable of surviving on their own. That was more true than she knew—Eirin had told me on that winter night about the importance of constant care as countless generations of selective breeding them had made their survival wholly dependent on their keepers.

I checked in on those single-minded creatures one night with a gibbous moon overhead but could not see much different in their bearing nor in their behavior. The light distorted my perception and I wiggled around my fingers, thinking them similar in color and substance to the silkworms. That was a disquieting illusion that took me aback. I knew that, under a different light, we would appear to be very different. Still, in that moment, it felt like there was some sort of connection, some sort of eternal commonality that was imposed upon us by the moon.

In the days and weeks that followed I would sometimes, when my mind was idle, think back to that moment. I thought about trying to share my disordered thoughts with Eirin but I did not know how to gather and shape that anxiety into anything coherent. Unable to make much sense, I didn’t want to worry her needlessly. Nor did I wish to risk finding out if she would be unable to relate to my feelings or to the still-growing silkworms.It was perversely enticing to keep that secret to myself. I allowed myself chew on thoughts and feelings as they came, in no particular hurry and with no set expectations.

---

The pleasant routine of caring for the silkworms lasted for a few weeks more. Our charges had become large and more animated, to the extent that it was difficult to believe that they had come from those small eggs not that long ago. Reisen and I exchanged satisfied looks on several occasions and that unexpected intimacy seemed to change her overall attitude. I noticed that she had become a little more familiar with me, casually asking me my opinion on things instead of maintaining a more reserved distance like she had previously done. I didn’t really have much of an opinion on things like the other rabbits nor whether or not she ought to style her hair differently but I found that a slight smile often formed on my lips and I felt compelled to patiently indulge her flights of fancy. I knew for a fact that she did not dare to speak so openly with Eirin, so it would have been a shame to offer even a mild rebuff and chance her retreating into herself.

On one occasion, Reisen complimented me on my refined behavior and kindness and seemed to mean it. I just behaved in a way that felt natural for me, I told her, a little self-conscious of being thought of as any sort of paragon. I wondered if she would have thought the same of the me that existed long before she had ever been born. Under different circumstances I would not have so much as given her a second look nor spared her a single word except for pointed commands. I really had not known any better and courted tragedy by living the only way I had known how. In the time since, people and events had given me several opportunities to reflect and look at different perspectives. This ongoing process had been slow at first but once the stasis at Eientei had ended it accelerated in such a fashion that I sometimes felt was outside my own control. I might have been frightened of that once upon a time but the phenomenon had become as familiar as it seemed inevitable. Both good and bad things happened as a result but I strove to coexist with these novelties as best I could manage.

Once or twice, Eirin checked in on us while we were busy with our work. She offered no comment on our solutions and care as such but instead tended to ask about my own impressions and thoughts of the process. I kept some of the more personal insights to myself but was glad that she listened patiently to my observations about the silkworms. At times I was tempted to make a comment about the impurity that permeated all things on Earth. The short life cycle of the silkworm seemed to be a clear example of that. I had even wondered if they would have any effect on my carefully-cared-for bonsai which Eirin had previously said would eventually grow jeweled fruits as a reaction to Earth’s ambient impurity. I held my tongue, thinking that the obsession with purity and impurity was best left to those who still lived on the moon. The only exception I made to that informal rule was during those long nights when everything was transformed by lunar light.

It was when the silkworms became clearer in complexion—approaching translucence—that our routine changed. The worms began to look for a niche of their own and, one by one, began to shake their brown heads quietly and started to weave. They wove a white and yellowish barrier that at first looked like the gossamer curtains of a palace. For a few days more they continued their inspired work and began to move less and less as they entombed themselves in ever more layers of wrapping that soon became thick and opaque. Finally, the exterior of the cocoon took on a reflective shine as the silkworms disappeared for good. We were left to contemplate the hanging bags of silk that were now adhered to the box’s shelves.

---

The pervious evening I had opened up the box on my own. The muggy weather combined with my unsettled thoughts had kept me awake. Eientei was quiet and the inaba were nowhere to be seen. The outside was cooler than I expected, perhaps due to the cloudy sky. Dressed in my sleeping clothes, this proved to be refreshing and I took my time to carefully make my way around in the dark. A little moonlight still managed to make it through the clouds and reflected off of the inert cocoons, appearing almost like a deliberate glint from the insect within. I wondered if during their weeks-long seclusion and transformation they had thought about me or what I had set out to do. Eirin would have surely told me that they don’t think at all and that all of their energy was focused on becoming moths but that truth was much less interesting what my imagination conjured up.

I was in control of what would happen to them. And yet, try as I might, I felt powerless against them; innate pride or fatalistic indifference seemed to be ingrained in them and kept them from pleading. I could not affect them in any meaningful sort of way. It was easy to conclude that they neither knew any better nor hoped for anything different. Even in another context, one where they were aware that they could decide their own fates, it appeared to me that they they would behave the same way. They would still decide to sit in a box, wait for their food, spin their cocoons, and race towards their inevitable deaths. They were afraid of the unknown. It was an cruel and unfair judgment but one that, nonetheless, rang true. As we were draped in dim, leaden, moonlight, I allowed myself to think about impurity and its presence in nearly all things. Even lunarians couldn’t completely escape it. The Lunar Capital and its seemingly-eternal stasis would also one day come to an end.

The rain continued to fall as I made my decision.

Reisen wore a broad grin after I told her what we were going to do. She was clearly relieved she would be spared the grim task of boiling and unraveling those small sanctuaries. The formal hierarchy that stifled the potential of both servant and master and isolated both did not exist on Earth. Nor should it be replicated. I told her as much but it didn’t seem she quite understood what I was getting at. That was fine—it was enough that it clear to me. She could figure it out at her own pace, in her own manner. Seeing how she had become less reserved around me, perhaps she was already well on her way.

“The silk thread is broken when they come out, it becomes imperfect, just so you know. It’ll have to be spun as if it were cotton.”

“We’ll have to learn how to do that after all the moths are gone.”

“Oh, you’re volunteering to help me?” I asked, letting an unguarded smile form on my lips.

“Yes, Princess Kaguya, we’ll make something pretty together even if the silk isn’t in perfect condition.”

“A necktie, perhaps?” my suggestion seemed to make Reisen hesitate and I sensed that she just barely resisted the urge to fiddle with her clothes. Instead, she looked away as she often used to do in the not-too-distant past. Some habits were difficult to truly break. There was no rush, however. We wold be spending a lot of time together yet. After the first moths emerged I would invite her to join me for a cup of tea and we would watch the moths do as they pleased whether under moonlight or sunlight. The rain would let up soon enough.

“I’m not sure we have enough silk for that and besides—”

“—Even if we don’t have enough silk, there’s always next year, right? We already have the trees and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of eggs stored away. I can count on you, right?”

“I’ll be in your care,” she said, her hair swaying behind her as she bowed.

“And I’ll be in yours,” I returned the gesture, confident that I had made the right choice.