[2] Stay focused! Lady Mima needs you to stay on task.
[10] Stop for a visit. You’ll make it quick…

Why would any of them miss me? I never really made an effort to connect with any of the other devils. Did I really misjudge things that bad? Your cheeks heat up with shame as you consider that uncomfortable possibility.

It feels like sacrilege to dwell on it at all, let alone for as long as you have been. But these were people you knew. Maybe not very well, but they were still acquaintances. You can’t let them continue thinking you had been permanently exorcised like Elis did. If they remember you, even slightly, then you owe it to them to clear things up, don’t you?

“Ten minutes,” you manage out after a long battle with your inner demons. “In and out. Just to let them know that I’m okay.”

A triumphant grin explodes across her face. With how suddenly her newfound vigor took hold, it’d be impossible to tell she was so sentimental seconds ago. “Glad to see there’s still a little bit of the girl I knew in there.”

Grimacing, your fingers dig deeper into the rope. Lady Mima surely understands. I’m just tying up loose ends before getting back on track. This is a necessary diversion.

She would understand that. Right?

The weightless rock suddenly feels very heavy in your arms.

Elis seriously wasn’t kidding when she said Vina had been expanded. What had once been an endless field of marble rubble, cracked pillars, and crumbling archways has been transformed into a veritable cityscape of weathered statues, dry fountains, and winding roads carved with elaborate patterns. All of it is in a state of deliberate decay, constructed to look ancient rather than actually be ancient, no doubt designed to impress foreigners with the illusion of a rich and storied past.

And, at the center of it all, still towering over the ruins as proudly as it had back then, stands the temple. There is no official name for it, or if there is, you’ve never known it as anything other than just “the temple.” It appears to have received minimal renovations, and in a way you’re glad. In a world that seems to get reinvented every few years, the sight of such a familiar place is almost nostalgic.

The other part of you wishes it had been torn down entirely. The temple carries memories you've spent years trying to leave behind.

Before becoming a familiar, it was where you spent most of your days. Every morning, Elis and her flock would gather beneath its vaulted ceiling to hear the good word of Shinki. Or Sariel. Or whatever topic Yuugenmagan had decided warranted a sermon that day, if she hadn’t gotten one from either of those two. Then, once the lecture of the day concluded, you and the posse would trail after Elis and listen as she launched into an even longer lecture, eagerly dissecting whatever had just been discussed.

It was all dreadfully dull, and not once did it ever provoke even a single critical thought from you. The subjects themselves should have fascinated you. The history of Makai's creation, philosophies on purpose and identity, lessons in mathematics, magic, and the principles underlying both. Any one of those topics ought to have held your attention for hours. Yet, it was all smothered beneath so many layers of ornate rhetoric and purple prose, every sermon might as well have been spoken in an entirely different language.

You tried to understand. You really did. Everyone else all nodded thoughtfully, they asked questions, and a few even debated interpretations. Surely the problem was with you. You must have been missing some crucial, self-evident piece of information about it all that would make everything click.

Whenever you asked for help, though, all you received were the same hollow talking points repeated ad nauseam in slightly different arrangements. They felt less like explanations and more like contests to see how many words could be used to communicate a single idea. And even then none of it ever became any clearer to you. Not the second time you asked, not the third, not even the fiftieth.

Regardless, you kept attending every day. Partly because the temple offered you the only sense of community you could find, but also because you foolishly held onto the hope that one day a sermon would finally reach you. That perhaps Yuugenmagan would say something genuinely profound, or that Elis, during one of her endless post-sermon speeches, would finally reveal the secret everyone else seemed to understand.

That moment never came. As far as you could tell, nobody ever said anything of substance. They simply kept circling the same ideas forever, mistaking motion for progress and noise for wisdom.

And even when surrounded by others, you found yourself alone. Alone and left with nothing to do but to retreat into your own head, imagining a world more interesting than the one Shinki had actually created.

If only Lady Mima had been Makai’s goddess instead.

“Hey girls! C’mere!” Elis bellows into the swirling arcane circle around her wand, the spell amplifying her voice to the point that Sara can probably hear it from Gensokyo. Which is to say, loud enough to violently rattle your entire being.

Your ears ring, your bones vibrate, your brain goes numb, your wings lock up, and you promptly fall out of the sky. Disoriented and flailing, you limply release Lady Mima’s rock and crash face-first into a weathered marble pillar. The impact hurts, but the embarrassment is worse. You desperately hope nobody saw that.

Naturally, a chorus of snickers ensues immediately after that thought, life never missing an opportunity to mercilessly crush your dignity under heel. Flapping your wings in a frantic effort to recover before you can flop onto the ground and look even more pathetic, you twist around in midair and face the group, hurriedly yanking the boulder back into your grasp with a swift tug of the rope.

There they are. A cluster of nameless devils, all doing a terrible job of hiding their amusement behind their hands and dancing eyes. There’s one or two less present than you recall, likely having moved on in life after getting names, but the sight of these three is still familiar enough.

Each wears the same outfit: white blouse, black vest, long black skirt, black ribbon, and a pair of leathery wings. Exactly like you used to wear. Back then, matching with everyone else never felt strange - it was like being part of a club. Now, as an outsider looking in, they come off as manufactured. Like Shinki had made a single devil and copied her over and over again with the same cookie cutter. The only meaningful differences are their hair and eye colors.

Before any of them can get a teasing word out, Elis smacks the nearest one over the head with her wand. "Oi. That isn’t very nice, now is it?"

The laughter dies out instantly, everybody’s attention turning toward Elis.

"Owowowow..." groans the victim, a devil with cream white hair and blunt bangs. She rubs her head with both hands, eyes squeezed shut. "S-Sorry, new girl."

"Huh?" The next devil, rusty-haired and brown-eyed, blinks. She suddenly looks quite sheepish beneath Elis’s admonishing gaze. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry."

"Mhmm. We didn't mean anything by it," chimes the third, a devil with velvet red hair and striking white eyes.

Those aren't exactly the reactions of old friends reunited. A knot starts to form in your stomach.

"C'mon, girls, use your eyes!" Elis huffs, then promptly smacks the other two across their foreheads in a single motion, causing both devils to squawk in pain. She swoops through the air and comes to a stop beside you, gesturing so enthusiastically and with such an intense gaze that you'd think she was unveiling the greatest person to ever live. "This ain't some random. It's Daydreamer! She's back from being a familiar!"

The three devils blink in unison, staring. The knot in your stomach tightens.

"You're right!"

"Wow, it's been forever!"

"Oh my gosh, she's back!"

Before you can process their words, all three descend upon you. One hugs you from the side, another immediately starts patting your head, and the cream haired devil beams inches from your face.

You’re completely and utterly stunned. The abundance of affection you’re being beset with is far more than you could have ever anticipated. They crowd around you so thoroughly that your wings can't even move anymore, though that hardly matters when they're collectively keeping you airborne through their contact. Holding onto the rock has suddenly become even more unwieldy than usual now that you’re the center of a mass glomp.

"H-Hi..." you manage weakly. The uncertainty you'd felt moments ago evaporates beneath the flood of smiles, cheers, and warmth. Heat crawls up your face, your brain struggling to keep up with what's happening. Defaulting back to what you came here for seems like a good idea. “Um. Sorry for, uh, never telling any of you I wasn’t dead?”

"We were so worried!" Rust hair suddenly sobs, squeezing your side tighter.

"How could you do that to us?" Cream hair pouts dramatically, still far too close to your face.

"We're just happy you came back." Velvet hair gives your head another gentle pat.

I don’t understand. What did I do to deserve this? You stare at them, but no matter how long you attempt to process, it never makes any more sense. They aren’t even mad you stuck them up for over half a decade. Your entire body goes slack, suddenly questioning reality itself as they each dote over you. “You all… really missed me that much?”

"Of course they did." Elis drifts around to look at you through one of the few gaps in the wall of hugs surrounding you. Proudly, she folds her arms. "As if we'd ever forget one of our own. Right, girls?"

"Right!" All three answer in perfect unison, never ceasing their barrage of hugs and pats.

You feel frozen. You don’t know what to say. What can you say?

"Say, why don't we treat her to a ‘welcome home’ breakfast?" Elis suggests brightly, clasping her hands together. "We can chat and catch up. You girls wouldn't believe what she's been trying to get up to since I found her."

The others perk up, and the little posse breaks into various, enthusiastic agreements.

You, on the other hand, suddenly snap back to reality. The boulder nearly cracks beneath your grip. “Hang on, I don’t have time for that. I only came by to visit.”

“What? You don’t even have time for breakfast?” Velvet hair raises a brow and looks back at you oddly.

"Yeah, c'mon. We wanna catch up." Cream hair clasps her hands beneath her chin and hits you with the most devastating puppy eyes you've ever seen.

"I-I, um..." The words are caught in your throat. Four pairs of expectant eyes are pinned on you.

[ ] Alright, fine. But you’ve got a mission to keep in mind. Focus on topics related to sealing.
-[ ] (Write-in: Only questions/ideas related to our goal)

[ ] Might as well. Your 10 minutes aren’t finished yet. Maybe you could just try to… relax?
-[ ] (Write-in: Only questions/ideas unrelated to our goal)