Huh. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Delicious. So delicious.

Certainly an amusing read.

I do like some Parsee. Good job.

She's a laugh, that girl. Always tinkering and crawling into whatever holes necessary to fix her clacking, ticking gadgets. Her home like a mad scientist's den slash batcave, with all the odd out of place outsider collectibles she has.
Every time I go in there, it's an adventure. You might be fooled into thinking it's safe since someone is supposed to live here, but really, it's just as deadly as any old youkai-filled forest if you don't know what you're doing. The treasure at the heart of the dungeon, however, is very much worth it. Even amongst the kappa — the youkai harbingers of nearly all technological advancement in Gensokyo — she stands out as a daring, promising young tinkerer. You'd be hard pressed not to be excited along with her as she blabbers on for as long as her tongue will stand it about whatever it is that will revolutionize all life in Gensokyo this time, in her characteristic childishly jumpy, excited tone.

That is, if you can first get to her. More of a mine field or obstacle course than laboratory, though the woman herself has absolutely no issue with it. She navigates it all as a spider walks her web, avoiding stepping on any buttons that would blow me, her or the whole place up.


But none of that stops me.
It is her after all.

Past the tall waterfall and the networks of caves where most kappa reside is where you'll find her. Probably nested along her metal belongings or sleeping under some work table or other, cushioned by the ever-present tools hanging from her belt and all of those resting with all her other experiments, eagerly waiting to be picked up and used again.

I pick my way through the large piles of her accumulated belongings carefully, slowly, like a thief in the night. Even though all I'm stealing this time around is a glance. Or two. Or many. She did give me the key, after all. It actually does take a portion of my willpower to not poke around, see what works and how from all the junk scattered around. Her expertise was the reason I first made the effort to approach her, reticent and shy as she was.

In addition to being a complete mess, her one-room home also constantly has all sorts of mysterious machinery constantly moving and cycling. The hissing, clicking and banging of metal is substantial, even hard to stand when you first walk in here. With time, though, it blends in with the ever-present echo of the waterfall, far away in the caves. In fact, it becomes a welcoming sort of cacophony. I hear it, and I know a friendly place is near.

It took a good amount of time and appreciable effort, but it was easily worth it. Even the walk through the Youkai Forest and and the swim through the perilous, at time turbulent river. It's all worth it, since I'm the only one who gets to see her like this.

I've got to say, Nitori has a very uncommon sleeping schedule, as well as choice of bedding. I hear her sleeping from the moment I step in, mumbling quite loudly to herself about 'angles of incidence' or whatever it is she's been focusing on for the last several days. That's the result of focusing on one project and not stopping to sleep or eat until you fall over on the spot. That's caused at least one fire before. I've thought about telling her to be careful, but that'd be very presumptuous. She's several decades older than me at least. She knows better than me. Should know, at least.

There she is, twisted over the pile of fluffy, duck-print covers and pillows scattered around strategic positions in the chaos that is her workshop-home, so she can stick an arm out and be ready to pass out wherever she's standing as soon as she finishes her latest weird project. She even still has the collection of wrenches, screwdrivers, even a soldering iron and whatever else she finds necessary stuck to the waistband of her shorts, making a chorus of quiet clinking sounds whenever she breathes, barely discernible in the noise of the machinery.

A side effect of the machines, clutter and lack of natural airflow is the fact that the room is nearly always hot enough to make even the most hardened desert youkai sweat. Of course, Nitori did build an artificial ventilation system — of course she would — even going so far as to dig out the entire net of people-sized air tunnels herself and installing the dozens of fans that make it work. Thing is, they ended up a popular hiding place for vermin, and as such, they stop working more often then not, the corpse of some critter or other stuck on a fan engine somewhere. This doesn't discourage the tiny industrious kappa, however. Much the opposite, in fact. She seems positively pleased when it happens, quickly strapping on her beltful o' tools and arm protectors, eager to crawl and fix.

Today is no exception, and the fan leading to the hole on the wall sits unmoving, mocking me. I've no idea how she manages to sleep in this oppressive swelter. Other than the accumulated exhaustion of several days of nonstop work I know she's probably gone through. It's her natural state.
I can pinpoint exactly what happened, when the fans stopped working with a crackle as they always do. Her overalls, hat, socks, and every other superfluous piece of clothing lay around her in a circle, lying where she tossed them due to the heat and the work. It's the look most familiar with me, the simplest and if you ask me, most attractive.

There are the shorts of denim. It's a rare material, the limited amount of the tough, comfortable fabric coming only from outside the barrier. She seems to have taken a special liking to it, and wears it almost exclusively when inside the home. I get the feeling she'd happily forgo it as well if that left her anywhere to hang her tools. For what remains of her garments, she's wearing only a strip of a white elastic material, like a sarashi. It too shows her disdain for wearing anything at home, being the smallest and least restrictive piece of fabric she could feel more or less decent in, tight so she doesn't have to keep fixing it up, making abundantly clear there's nothing but her own skin underneath. Of course, there's the pendant with the golden key as well, which she presses to her chest even as she sleeps.
One day. One day I'll ask about it.

She only dresses (or rather, doesn't dress) this freely when there's no one around, though. Or at least no one other than me. It appears that I've hung around her for so long that she's ceased seeing me as a human and begun to see me as another in her collection of tools. It does feel good that she's not shy at all with me, and I've learned more with her than I think any other human here has known about electronics and mechanics in a long time.
Still... I have my pride as a man.

I crouch by her, picking up the discarded clothes and folding them neatly on my lap. She won't let me clean all this mechanical junk up, says she 'knows where everything is', but at least this much I can do. Thinking about the first months, it's great that I can even approach her like this without startling her awake like a scared kitten. Although that was cute too.

Her bangs stick to her in wavy strands. Drops of sweat bead her forehead and temples, making it look like she's got gems on her skin. One of them runs down her cheeks, red with the heat, stopping just above her just slightly cracked lips.
Yeah. Stopping for water and food is also not something she does often while working.

It slips over and in when she mumbles again. She mumbles and talks in her sleep a lot, usually a lot of technical terms that I don't understand yet. If there's something cuter, I'm not aware of it.

The top she wears shows off her slim shoulders and gently curving collarbones, all flush, shiny with sweat and moving rhythmically with her breathing, up and down, up and down. Her uncovered navel also: from her hips to the waistband of her shorts, all in smooth and peaceful motion. Sleeping like a baby would be an apt description. I know that she's done with whatever project she was working on, otherwise it'd be more fitful, and she'd be awake and working again just from my footsteps. Her concentration is a frightful thing.
For a moment her breath catches, like a hiccup, and I freeze up, afraid I've woken her up from her very well deserved sleep. Her eyebrows knit.

“No... I'll need another pressure regulator...”

I smile at her sleepy expression. Nothing to worry about, just another of her unconnected phrases.

Guess I should get going. I need to fix up food for when she wakes up, wash these sweat-drenched clothes and do everything else that needs to be done around here.
Or I would. If a pair of breakable-looking, oil stained, meager arms hadn't wrapped themselves around mine and locked themselves firmly in place.

I look down at her. Still asleep, Nitori passes her tongue over her lips, making them look quite red all of a sudden.

“I...Install the air brakes...”

She pulls down at my arms with all the strength of an anemic human, but the message is clear to me. The gesture ignites memories of long, long ago, when my little sister used to do much the same thing every time I tucked her in to sleep.



...It looks like I have no choice but to stay here a little while longer.

>>1011
D'awwww, this is adorable!

Good job with the descriptions. I could clearly imagine her house in my head, without delving too much into details. And for a short, I guess the relationship development is well defined too. I'll be drawing some inspiration from this once I get to write about the cute gadgeteer kappa myself.

Very nice. Brought a silly grin to my face.

Good taste with that outfit. You'd think an aquatic creature would be more concerned about the heat.

Very, very nice. Sleeping Touhous are wonderful.

>>1027

Probably the most arousing picture of Nitori I've ever seen. Just sayin.

Another!
I tried to steer slightly away from the fan-service-ish facet for this one. Make it interesting without too much sexuality, as it were.

_____

Having no earthly needs really changes your perspective on life.


I stand in the forest: the mountain looming over me nearby, fields and the small congregation of humans far in the distance: trading, fighting, talking, loving, hating, living their tiny human lives. It's quaint and lovely.
I look around at all the green. The only escape is upwards: closer to the occupied mountain... which is also green.

I bite my right hand out of simple boredom: hard enough to leave a mark for a couple days. A strange, bad habit, if I'm hones, like chewing your nails. It's purple and painful, but I do it anyway.
This is my everyday. Take a stroll through the wild forest full of youkai, and not much else. I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't even sleep if I don't want to. I am a goddess. I am the goddess of misfortune, which all people and youkai avoid as if I had the plague.


I look away from the far away human settlement, and to the nearby river which flows from there. It, too, is full of hate, fear, worries. What someone may call curses, and which only I can clearly see.. Here flows my job. With a few cracks from my tired joints, I stretch and set back to work: or, one part of my work. To dissolve all the human misfortune flowing into the river. I can't simply let all this pass into nature, after all. It's my nature: I can no more avoid doing it than a cat can avoid chasing a fly, or a worm can avoid digging.
I am, in truth, not at all worried about being avoided. It is who I am, at all. It cannot be any different: I handle bad things. Black, painful, horrible misfortune inevitably wafts from me like the unmistakeable stench of death from a corpse. It's completely unavoidable, and that is it. Case closed. Zé fini. The end. Null. 完.
It is more than tolerated. It is expected. If (when) a human shows: with his sword, his back pack, his cap, his bottomless young excitement and hunger for adventure, it is my job to turn them away from this place with mere words and appearance: my gaunt, bony figure. The bags under my eyes and unnatural jerky movements, and the naturally occuring ugly bruises in my body. And if that doesn't work, with painful energy bullets.


But that does not mean I like it.
Why was I born this way? My question is not unlike that of many humans. What is the meaning of life? That's fine and all. I have that answer. To dispel and manage misfortune. What I don't have is the satisfaction. Why do I have to do this? Why it is that I do what I do? Was I born merely to serve humans? That's no good. I'd rather have been a Youkai, at this rate.

But none of it matters. No matter my thoughts on the subject, I'm compelled to do it.
Sometimes, a human shows up at the edge of the forest, fearful: shaking before my dark, pustulent, overwhelming presence like a newborn fawn. I smile, and they tremble more. They ask for my favour. They ask for my effort, my sweat, my blood. They run away at full speed like the devil himself was chasing them as soon as they've achieved what they want, with nary a thanks. They leave me alone in the forest, as I always am. The more polite, believing ones leave me some fresh fruit. Fresh fish, meat, a sculpted statuette. A pretty gem, if they're particularly rich. I don't use any of it, but I'm thankful for the thoughts.


I am a different kind of being. Unconnected from food, drink, sleep, human needs such as companionship. It's a strange feeling, to be without anyone to talk to for years, except for random passers-by needing direction. Why then, am I given a human-like mind and psyche? The greater gods, or whoever had the warped idea to create me like this: they truly are mysterious beings.
Why is it that I crave companionship? Why is it that I behave like a grumpy hermit when approached? I don't understand. It just happens. I don't understand any of it.


The one I least understand is this one. Here he comes, walking along one of the many rivulets of the forest. I know why he comes: it's not the first time. A young Kappa, barely 50 years old, with a small fraction of my life experience. Youthful face, like a little boy, an innocent boy. I could run circles around him, mentally and physically: stop his heart with a mere thought. Plague his entire 500 or só year life with death and misforture. He's a hundredth of my age. He doesn't understand anything: he doesn't know humans, he doesn't know the tengu, he can't walk the forest like me. He doesn't reach the soles of my feet when it comes to knowledge of the world.

Yet, he courts me, like a human male would a female. He brought me flowers and took my lips, once, where you could see the mountain raise aboth our heads. I was more confused than anything else. I couldn't react. He ran away then.
His face burned into my mind, although I should have been impressed at nothing at my age. Such stories are for young, impressionable humans and silly youkai. I am a being of more than a thousand years old. I can barely be classified as male or female, except for the clothes I was born with.


Today, he comes without a gift. He stretches a great big smile before me, threatening to rip his face apart at the mouth: he's pleased to see me again. Again, I don't understand. He chats about the happenings at his little watery kappa burrow, at the base of the mountain. I don't understand the relevance of such short-lived creatures, yet I'm drawn to imagine them, like a little book drama. I care when I shouldn't. His broad cheeks, wide, bright, green eyes capture me, when they shouldn't.

He kisses me again today as he leaves, licking all my teeth dutifully, touches me where people usually aren't touched. I continue on not quite understanding.




Not understanding, yet pining.
Maybe I'll never understand.


The young kappa's face sticks in my head.
I wonder when he'll visit next.

Not quite sure what to say. I guess it's like those movies that chicks watch over and over again, even tho it makes them cry their little eyes out.

While the intent and prose are clear, I'm afraid the appeal is a tad bit lost on my masculine sensibilities.

>>1521
In my defense, I was drunk while writing that last one.

>>1522

You don't need a defense, I never said it wasn't good.

Goddere Hina route when?

“ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT YA FILTHY DAMN RATS, MOVE, MAKE WAY.”

Those are the very first words I remember from her.
I closed my eyes and the absolute first image that came to my head was this one particular old, fat village drunk. He’d drink himself blind and dumb through the afternoon and stumble back home when the sun came down, braying “YAH! AH!” at the children like you would at a particularly mangy stray dog, yelling nonsense, laughing loud enough at nothing to scare the poor pidgeons off their perches. A common drunk. By sound alone, she might have been the same. Only difference is, she didn’t have a common drunk’s voice, and neither did she slur. It distinctly reminded me of a crow’s hoarse cawing, and not an agreeable crow at that, but it was a woman’s voice to be sure.
But I opened my eyes and the drunk was gone. This one didn’t stumble or stop to sip from a bottle, nor did she get heckled by children. Instead, the entire street cleared for her as she asked. I’ve scarcely ever seen anything like it, except when the Maiden comes walk our streets for one reason or another, or the nobility from the lake deigns to visit with her winged retinue. The one I lived in wasn’t a minor, unpopulated street either; it was at the heart of the village. Some of the peddlers went so far as to pack up and leave as she showed up; parents held their children, me included; the sound of all the rickety old wooden windows closing could be heard as she passed.


I was barely old enough to know what was going on, but she fascinated me, for a simple reason: She seemed to be having an awful lot of fun. Doing nothing much than marching, dancing through town, snapping at people who looked at her wrong and overall bothering as many people as possible. It seemed like she always had at least a shadow of a smile in her face: bitter, genuine, mocking, it didn’t matter.
It’s not like I didn’t understand why people cleared the road for her: The extravagantly designed clothes, the unnaturally coloured hair, the little horns poking out from her head. She was not one of us.
That, too, fascinated me. Why and how is a random youkai able to just waltz in here? Don’t we have guards? How about the Hakurei? She didn’t care a lick. I do think she was chased out a few times, and I’m certain her actions didn’t go without consequences, but she never actually hurt anyone, and she was always back in a few months.

And all that… for groceries.
That’s right. She came a few times a year, raised hell, just to walk into a store and walk out with nothing but a truck-sized bag full of food and an immensely self-satisfied smile. In my child’s mind, she was an apparition, a superhero without the hero part, an unexplainable phenomenon.


So, one day, when my parents weren’t around and she was having her little parade, I went and talked to her. Just like that.
I was not a smart child.
I say ‘talked,’ but really I just kind of stood in front of her, without any idea of what to say. It suffices to say that her reaction was predictable.

“Scram or I’ll chomp ‘yer fattie chops off, kid.” — followed by a lunge and a snap of the teeth, loud enough that it surely would have broken any human’s teeth. Close enough that her hair tickled my nose. It startled me, but I’d be damned if I let a girl scare me. I followed.
I was really not a smart child.

It didn’t take four paces before she turned back to me.
“Didn’t ya hear me, boy? Y’eat a mud pie and replace yer’ brain, or didja sneeze it out? I said leave, clear out, bolt, get outta here.”
I didn’t. I just laughed: she talked funny. My survival instincts were off on a hike, that day.

“A’ight, yer testin’ it, now. Gee up, kid.” Making a grab faster than I could see, she hoists me up and over the shoulder, where I flop down like an old bag of bricks. “Y’mine now.”

And she set off laughing, with me shaking on her shoulder. I’m sure it was a great racket at the time, what with a youkai ‘kidnapping’ a child, and I certainly regretted it afterwards, after not a few canings. But in the occasion, nobody stepped forward to stop her or do more than whisper to their neighbors. Just the nature of people, I suppose.


“Ears up, chump. You ever hear the tale of Urikohime?” I nodded. “Then, ‘eres a much better version for ye.” She lets go of me to gesture — although I can’t see it, being bent over her shoulder, facing backwards — that I have to pull on her clothes not to fall.
“Once upon a time, a dim kid was born from a mound’a manure. Y’with me? Then, sum’ ‘ninportant crap happened. Th’part that matters is this ‘ere: One day, th’ dim kid d’come upon this dazzlin’, gallant Amanojaku on a stroll. Hear?” She shakes me at this point, and I hold on tighter. She continues dragging her cawing voice across me, still speaking not unlike the some of the older farmers from the outskirts of the village. “Th’ Amanojaku in’t so glad at this littl’ pique of a tot kickin’ at ‘er shins, y’see? So she nabs ‘im n’ drags th’kid back to th’ dungeon. We keep dungeons.” She chuckles, like at a private joke.

“‘Nywise, th’ Amanojaku skins th’ human whelp alive, n’that’s th’ moral of the story: don’ pester me. Got a question?”

I thought for a moment. Maybe I wasn’t quite clear on the meaning of the verb ‘to skin’, maybe my mind had just ran away from me that day. One way or another, these are what came out of my mouth, my first words to her:

“Was he alright after?”

There was a stilted silence for a short second after that — and only that. She snorted once (not a graceful sound), then started laughing far louder than before. Shrill, loud enough that it started to hurt my ears, and, if I’m honest, not at all soothing to hear. She slapped my thighs at her shoulders and kept at it the whole way to the shop. Plopped me down like a log of wood and went inside, still laughing.


I believe she meant to drive me away, scare me. All it did was charm my impressionable young mind further.
That was our first meeting.


There were to be others.

___

>part one
Interesting, I don't think Seija has been in a story yet.

Need more of this.

Oh fuck, I just realized I switched tenses halfway through that one.
Warn me of that stuff, ya chumps.

Oh god it's gunna update. I can feel it in my bones.

>>1647
I'm so excited right now!

I grew up, as boys often do. My infatuation with Miss Youkai never abated. Other kids had some interest in youkai too, but only insofar as it helped them play at youkai hunter or daydream about how cool they'd be when they grew up to be the hero of the village. Not so with me. I read up wherever I could about them, studied, simply because I wanted to know more about her. You know, in that clumsy, unattainable-young-love-that’s-more-like-admiration kind of way. Those weren’t my proudest moments, I’ll admit.
Starting with our first meeting, I never missed a chance to go up and talk to her every time she happened to stop by. I ended up meeting the bad side of a cane or belt every time from my parents, not to mention the odd looks from the rest of the villagers, but I’ve never regretted it. They couldn’t stop me anyway: I was always out and about, like most kids, and it didn’t seem like anyone had the courage (or bothered to, anyhow) march up to her and drag me away once I did attach to her side like some kind of lovestruck tick.

That’s not to say she was always welcoming; much the opposite, in fact. Colourful would be a fitting enough word - a more honest soul may say moody. Sure she laughed and quipped pleasantly enough sometimes, but she was sullen an equal amount of occasions, angry, and once or twice she straight up slapped me so hard I dropped to the floor, just for approaching her. That kind of moody.
I couldn't very well call myself a man if I let that much stop me. It was worth it, anyhow


So we went on being… ‘friends’ for quite a few years. Friends is far from a proper denomination, but I don’t think there's any fitting word for our relationship at the time.
...Until she decided to radically change it.

She’d been pretty feisty, that day. More talkative than usual, for sure.
“So anyhow,” she crows, narrowing her eyes and taking a swig of… whatever it is she had. “Th’ cursed half-pint thought it a good idea to put out an all-points bulletin on me, can ya believe it?” Following close behind her, I nodded, even though I had no clue what an all-points bulletin was. She snickered and shook her head, messing up her hair even more. I don’t think I’d ever seen that hair in order.
“Had half’a Gensokyo on my ass and I took ‘em all out, no trouble. Pr’chance if they all came at once, they might’a had a sporting chance, huh? Ha!”
The laugh cut through the air with all the grace and quiet dignity of a wounded pelican. I’m sure I would’ve cringed if I weren’t used to her voice. Bragging time was always when she looked the cheeriest, so I refrained from mentioning all the time she spent complaining about miss Hakurei effortlessly kicking her around.
Her smile always brought me a warmth, even if you couldn't ever call it good-natured.


She suddenly went quiet for a bit, which wasn’t that unusual by itself. What was unusual was what came next.
She gave me a long sideways look, as if sizing me up. “How about you, then?”

I wasn’t exactly used to her taking an interesting on me. It was pretty much unprecedented, in fact. “M–me?”

She clicked her tongue. “No, m’dead aunt. Y’see anyone else, idiot?”

“What about me?”

She gave me a second long look, as if considering something. “Holy, now that I take a good look at it... What’re you, taller’n me now?” She grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me closer, causing no small amount of embarrassment. I really was taller than her by then, though not by much. Still, I felt a little proud. “Y’damn tiny humans grow like bamboo shoots. Hasn’t even been an year since y’were a little tot, has it?”

“...It’s been like half a decade.” Or thereabouts.
Thankfully she didn’t pick up on the blush from being up this close to her. I’m sure she’d tease me the rest of the way if she did. Being this near to her, I felt the familiar smell of smoke, drink and sweat. I might've thought she was a frequent bar crawler if I didn't know her: the bitter mix of scents was more or less always present, if you were close enough to her to feel it.
It even felt... nostalgic, I'd been around her so long.

“Whatever.”
...A very Seija reaction. “Say, y’really are grown.”

I looked down at myself. It’s one of those things you really can’t tell very well yourself, but I suppose I truly had been blessed. My father was a handsome man: stout, tall, broad-shouldered, full beard, always well-groomed black hair, and I mostly took after him. That, along with helping in his workshop and being generally active made me grow up nicely. The awkward period between man and child had been making itself mercifully short and painless in my case.


Seija smirks, and from experience, that’s the one expression you never wanted from her. open-mouthed laughter, scowls, furious grimaces, sure. But never a smirk. “I hadn’t noticed, but aintcha a personable young man now?”

“Well—”

“Saay…” I got brazenly interrupted, as usual. “I don’t s’ppose you’ve had any adventures yet, have ya?” She shifted one hand to my neck, which was… no, ‘uncomfortable’ is not quite the right word. “Surely you got girls practically hangin’ offa you, don’tcha? Come on, I’ve seen the girls in the village and it’s not a bad selection at all. How about the bookstore girl? You’ve gotta have macked on a few of them.”

Damn. I got enough of this from dad. I’d have sighed if I wasn't presently too busy being horribly flustered. Instead it’s all I could do to look vaguely sheepish.
Truth be told, there were probably a few chances, but… Well, I was preoccupied with one specific girl at the time. One specific youkai girl.

“Really now? Not even a little smooch? Little squeeze under a dress, maybe?”

Er… I shook my head.

“Well then,” the smirk reached her eyes, a terrible, terrible sign. Or perhaps not so terrible, in this particular situation. “What a waste… Wouldn’t you like to try?”


—

SLAM
My shoulders ached. I imagine I should’ve been just about scared stiff, being slammed against a wall by an eerily smirking youkai, but the situation was a little unusual at the time.
Turns out the village was plentiful in dark alleys. Not that hiding did us much good with how unabashedly she’d been yanking me about by the arm, the intent obvious to anyone who cared to look.
“I’da forgotten about this kinda thing, y’know. Too much shootin’, dodging, tea and teasin’ the tiny one since I got here. But yeah, there was this kind of a past-time too.”


So she attacked me. I’d heard descriptions for this kind of thing. That it was supposed to be soft and warm you up or some such nonsense.

Not so with Seija.
She tasted faintly of smoke and heavily of sweet sake.

She pushed me against the alley wall. It hurt, being pressed between a hard wall and a bony girl. She ‘kissed’ me, in the same sense a starving dog kisses a cut of fresh meat. I was pulled in with just one hand and easily pinned. Her cracked lips scratched mine uncomfortably, although I only felt it for a scant second before she vulgarly stuck her tongue into my mouth. I tried to move away on reflex, but she bit into my lip to keep me there. I don’t know if she forgot that Youkai have sharper teeth than humans, but I felt the metallic taste of blood almost immediately along with a second consecutive sting as she dug her tongue into the small cut best she could. A parting present, I suppose.

The worst part of it all is that I wouldn’t have had it any other way or from anyone else. Blame it on being young and stupid if you will.


She came away mussed up and licking her lips (a curious shade of cherry red) and looking mighty self-satisfied. Only far enough away — close enough that all I could see was her. The cute little horns that got you a kick if you called them cute to her face, the perpetually messy multicoloured hair, each of her sharp teeth.
“Impressions?”

It took me a second to answer — my brain was completely on tilt. I’d fantasized about this, spent nights thinking about this, about how I’d hold her and told her I loved her and all those embarrassing things young men sometimes think about.

But all I manages was a lame “That hurt.”

Her red-dyed grin widened. I’m really glad I only ever saw this expression in this kind of context, and not any other. She breathed hard half through her teeth, and I felt again the strangely distinctive trace of smoke from her, although I’d never seen her with a pipe or anything like that. “I like a little blood in my love. Doesn’t it just warm you up like crazy?”

“I thought you were some kind of oni, not a vammn—”

— I couldn’t complete the thought.
She nibbled on the same cut again, and for a moment I knew she was right; the feeling of a kind of warmth spread out, completely drowning out any remaining pain. The fact that she was desperately pushing her entire body against mine didn’t make things worse.

That’s not to say it felt terribly good, in itself. At the time, I would’ve probably died sooner than admit she looked anything less than perfect, but in truth, she never exactly fit the template of an attractive woman. Scrawny, didn't exactly effort in her looks aside from the spiffy dress, not much in the way of womanly proportions or much meat at all; the poking of her hipbones was hardly comfortable.

Of course, at that age, things like that don't matter in the least.

I responded with all the enthusiasm an adolescent boy could. Incredibly clumsy as I was, I tried my best to make her show some kind of reaction, even almost bit back at her, until I remembered her lips were cracked. I’m not quite as cruel has her. Not much reaction, but Seija didn’t seem much more experienced than me, more breathlessly mashing against me than anything else.

She separated from me for a brief moment, clicking her tongue annoyedly in between heavy gasps.
“H—”
The first try didn’t go through. She swallowed and uselessly tried to get her breathing under control, knitting her brows and trying to sound annoyed. “H—hands, God damn it. Get a clue.”

She couldn’t wait, apparently. I felt a tug at my hands — then, something softer.

...Okay, maybe some in the way of womanly proportions. Nice meaty thighs, unfortunately always hidden under the long dress.
Until just then, at least. She went stiff for a split second when I touched the firm flesh directly. after pulling her dress up rather roughly, like you could sometimes see men do to women in the less... wholesome districts of the village. I pinched, and as I'd hoped, she showed her first real reaction. An almost-moan — would’ve been a moan if I didn’t seal her mouth once again, halfway through. Still kissing her best I could manage — which surely couldn’t be that well, but apparently well enough — I pulled my hand further up, fingering that thin band of flimsy fabric and exposing more of her pale body along the way: The delicious milky thighs, the hipbone, just a tad too clearly defined, her slender stomach, the shadow of the ribs —


And a swift punch to the solar plexus.
I let go of Seija completely and bent over, struggling to catch my breath. She did the same, in a different sense.
“Wh— Who…” she tried between heaving breaths. “The fuck? Who th’hell told you t’do that?”

I was… just going with the flow.
She fixed her hair and put her dress back in order, both uncharacteristically girly gestures for her. I still wasn’t in a position to say anything. “Y’damn humans do love getting carried away.” Looked like she’d already more or less recovered her composure. I couldn’t say the same for myself; not even close.

“B—but you…”
It’s rather pathetic, but that was all I managed to get out at the time.

“But nothin’ kid. Try n’ keep your hands to yourself. Or find yourself one of em pretty human girls. They won’t bleed you like me.”
Thinking back, she didn’t actually look quite stable herself, but I didn’t exactly have the presence of mind to see it at the time. Too busy shaking.

“I—I’m going,” she said her farewells, which was in itself unusual, before skipping off rather more quickly than usual.


That day would have farther reaching consequences than I could've imagined at the time.

>>1665
i almost wanna say "fuck the bucket"
this is pretty good.

I DO wanna say "fuck the bucket do this instead", but that might come off as a bit rude and unappreciative of the efforts you go through to provide bucket, so I won't actually say it.

Dude needs to learn up on how amanojaku work.

>>1666
>>1667
Can't we fuck the bucket and the amanojaku at the same time?

>>1674
>amanojackass bullying and then sexing the bucket
i want this so much.

>>1675
It's been done, kinda. It's not Seija, but hey. In case you missed it:
http://www.touhou-project.com/at/res/34221.html

>>1667
Please, I'm not that sensitive. These shorts are pretty much just an excuse to write, but I suppose I'll consider a Seija story if nobody has started one by the time I finish up my current one.

It was the witching hour.

There wasn’t a lot of light. Oil had to be conserved and anyway she was used to this much. The scratch of feather on paper drowned out the faint night sounds from outside, and if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Her cheek nearly brushed the desk, the candle night-blinded her, the wooden chair, set up in a poor position, bruised her behind. She didn’t notice. She could no longer even register the oppressive sulfuric odours of alchemy that suffused her home and workshop. She was past caring about the sea of often dangerous junk that covered every available surface – except for her working desk, of course, which was exactly as clean and clutter-free as if it’d just been magicked into existence that very moment. Her eyes were baggy, but burning with a brighter light than you’d be likely to find at any other moment for this particular witch. She wrote and drew feverishly, covering each pristine page of a thick blank book with diagrams, tables and sketches at a hand-cramping pace. Her long hair was limp and oily. She hadn’t changed from her practical, thick, worn set of gathering overalls, covered with layers and layers of dirt.
Underneath, she was literally running on fumes, having augmented her concentration and stamina several steps beyond exhaustion through alchemical means. If it had been possible for her focus to wander, she might think of Reimu’s mothering, advising her against precisely this sort of overwork. That moment, however, her pupils were dilated, her heart pumping hard enough to put her through a marathon, her mind operating beyond consciousness. The black lines raced across the pages: size, colour, consistency, texture, position, reactivity to light, air, all painstakingly written down over many tries. But this was it. It was the culmination of nine days of nonstop research, gathering, reading, searching with inhuman single-mindedness, with no food and no real breaks. The last leg.


Her sample this time was a thumbnail-sized frog, coloured striking iridescent blue. It sat splayed on its back, neatly vivisected with its pinkish-purple insides in plain sight. Its organs, the biggest no larger than a grain of rice, laid on the desk, carefully picked apart by tweezers and arranged in an orderly fashion.
The feather stopped and the witch put it down, taking a deep breath. Her eyelid twitched.

Her motions slightly less robotic now, she took one of the tiny, tiny organs and dropped it into a mortar along with a few other ingredients. Powders, dried herbs, a few drops of mercury; all prepared, extracted or otherwise procured by her own sweat and tears. She may be a shameless thief, but when it comes to her magic, she accepts nothing less than absolute certainty of good form. Most of the time, anyway.

Now for the final act, came the voice in her head – her first real distinguishable “thought” in possibly days. The best and worst part.

But she needed to prepare first.
Without thinking about it, or thinking about much at all other than the immediate next action she needed to take, she disrobed on the spot and went about readying herself. For a pair of hours she went through the full checklist: up the stairs for a short but thorough cleansing in the bathtub, scrubbing hard enough to clean the soul. Down to what passed for her kitchen, she had a good hearty meal: beans, cheese, bread, butter, dried meat. A cup of burning hot alcohol, a spoon of honey and ginger to enliven her up. However, she could not stop to enjoy any of it; if she did, she’d immediately crash, tossing all those days of effort straight into the garbage. It had happened before. And so she stayed focused, completing each task mechanically before moving on to the next, her mind still in a kind of laser-focused haze.


After sending off a magic-guided paper plane to the shrine, she was finally done. She grabbed the mortar with the concoction with both hands and slipped outside, her footsteps a whisper on the grass. She didn’t notice, but by happy coincidence, it was a full moon that night – any magic would be that much greater, any effect felt twofold. Although she hadn’t done a thing yet, the world itself noticed something about to happen. Like water running down a growing whirlpool, the attention of all that was not physical started focusing on this one spot, the small patch of grassy field outside a lonely witches’ house in the forest. The girl’s slender, sunburned body already glowed with unearthly magic: a subtle slivery light enveloped her, visible only to those with the right kind of sight or the right kind of mind. She felt it pushing her on as well, pressuring her from every direction, and it made her entire body tingle with familiar sharp anticipation.

The girl’s breath caught, feeling tiny before the might of the world and yet massive in being its vessel. She forwent the pestle, dipping her fingers inside the bowl and mashing the mixture into a kind of paste. She felt it, hesitated for the briefest moment – then tipped it back and consumed all of it in one sound gulp.

There’s a clear break in the night. All around the lonely house, the dead silence of the grave descends. Crickets die, wolves turn tail and run, owls stumble in mid-flight. Somewhere, a certain foxes’ ears twitch: someone’s poking the barrier again.


The witch simultaneously screamed, cried, whimpered, moaned and babbled as the most powerful orgasm that can be felt shattered her body, and the most excruciating pain imaginable liquefied her insides. Her nerves intermittently lost physical form, were scrambled and put back into place every few milliseconds. All of her muscle fibres twitched uncontrollably, her toes curling so hard that a couple of them broke. She felt something like a contracted string behind her left eye snap with a crack. She experienced the cycle of death and rebirth. Her eyes shifted into a uniform milky colour and she felt a strong impact like a slap on her chest – coming from the inside. She crumpled on the spot.
So ended the first minute of Marisa’s long night.


+++++


Reimu sighed, patting the magician currently curled up on her lap, sobbing profusely. She wished she could say she was surprised when she arrived to find Marisa naked, bloody and bruised, watching the sunrise from a treetop, but this would mark the seventh time it happened. Hard to say she hadn’t seen it coming.
At least she didn’t have to chase down and subdue her friend this time, and her worst injuries seemed to be some foot fractures and a ruptured artery in one eye. Not too bad, comparatively.
Marisa unabashedly rubs her snot and tears on the nice clean robes. “Reimu,” she sniffles between sobs. “Reimu, why am I crying?”

“Is it because you realized how much of a total inconsiderate idiot you are?”

She shook her head earnestly, smearing the miko outfit further. Reimu sighs again. There wasn’t much to be said: she’d given up trying to seriously admonish her friend at around the fourth time. She wrapped the blanked tighter around Marisa. The poor girls’ blubbering was just starting to become intelligible again, although most of it seemed to consist of the world ‘Reimu’.

“Marisa, I think I’ve told you this, but if you die in one of these stunts, I’ll personally drag your soul out from under the yama’s nose if needed and dump you into hell.” She pinched Marisa’s cheek, not altogether unkindly.

“Reimuuu… Reimu. I know, Reimu.” She looked up from her lap, eyes puffy and bloodshot. “I know why I’m crying.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” Reimu asks, her tone that of a mother humouring her child.

“I saw her, Reimu.” Marisa’s voice dropped to a whisper “She’s coming to finish teaching me properly, she told me.” She sniffs. “I can feel it. Next time I do it for sure. Next time. I can feel it in my bones.”

Reimu’s only response is to sigh again.

Mima you dick. Your cute student is crying like two feet away from you. Wake up and get a clue.

2000 years later, but I have to say that I really enjoy your writing isolex. Hope to see more from you.

And mima, please come back. We all miss you, expecially your student. Really.