Touhou Ship Week 2020

by GrimoireOfAlice

Summary:

Prompt fills for 2020's Touhou ship week on twitter. Mostly experimental part-prose part-comic stuff!

1. Satori/Patchouli: firsts/reunion
2. Alice/Marisa/Yuuka: teaching/sharing hobbies
3. Hecatia/Junko: secrets
4. Eirin/Kaguya: pre-Gensokyo/historical
5. Yukari/Yuyuko: hurt
6. Yukari/Reimu: date
7. Renko/Maribel: free day!

Chapter 1: Satori/Patchouli: Firsts/Reunion

Notes:

Satori/Patchouli was a crackship I came up with years ago, possibly for no better reason than that they were both reclusive, purple, and liked books. And then Touhou Chireikiden came along and made them INTERACT (sans the medium of Marisa) and I felt it was finally time to bring out my old epistolary relationship headcanon. I sort of merged the two prompt choices for this day into one. A meeting can be both of these things at once.

It doesn’t even seem that long ago – you remember – Marisa had come to poke around, and I, proud and ignorant, showed her my library. ‘Unimpressive’, she shrugged – I remember this very clearly, “it’s got nothin’ on Patchy’s’. I still cannot bring myself to call her that. And I can barely bring myself to think back to that first letter of mine. Marisa didn’t think or think to tell me that it was a magical library. As I began to compose this initial offer of friendship, I became convinced that I and this mysterious Patchouli already shared a bond as fellow readers, lovers of fiction. So caught up in this fantasy was I that the coldness (was it coldness?) of her letter, when it arrived, came as a real shock. I know it was silly, but I felt slighted.

Pardon the expression, but that threw you into a fuckin' state.

Well yes I said it was a shock. It was embarrassing. But I was all muddled up. In the end, the interest she expressed in the books I’d inherited from Hell’s old library was genuine (if academic) – not just a gesture of politeness, a gloss over my clumsy assumption. But still -

Thus begineth the saga!

I know Orin, I know. You mustn’t – no you must try and understand. No, I know, you have tried, you are trying. I’m sorry, I don’t need to say it.

What gets me is – or rather I don’t get it – I used to tell you all the time that it was just like Koishi and you’re fine talking to Koishi now. Can’t ya just read her and respond to her as you would to Koishi? I know it was more personal than administrative letters and stuff – but you talk to someone in real space and time whose thoughts you can’t read just as often as you get letters from Ms. Knowledge. But it wasn’t the same, you always said, it wasn’t anything like Koishi.

I’ve told you. Koishi says and does exactly what she means and what she wants.

But I’ve read her letters when you’ve asked me to and they’re really straightforward. She doesn’t beat around the bush. If she’d had a problem she woulda let you know. Always seemed to me as if she really liked you.

I know you think I was worried more about how I came across in return.

Yeah but it always seemed like… I dunno, you were always flustered about it because you didn’t know why you were flustered? Or you wouldn’t say.

I wanted her to like me. There.

Well, that’s progress. So, uh, won’t you tell me now? What was it like finally meeting her? I know you said to me over and over again that it was just a job, but – ok ok – go on?

The room was crowded. Lots of thoughts.

You caught her alone afterwards, right?

Do you know where you’re going now?

 

No, not at all. But now – it isn’t because I can’t see.

Notes:

smug catgirl wingman orin checks through your texts before you send them

Chapter 2: Alice/Marisa/Yuuka: Teaching/Sharing Hobbies

Alice pushed her hair back and looked up at Marisa with a frown. “You took so long getting those,” she sighed, “that I had to get Yuuka to help me out.”

Marisa simply laughed as she set the books down, and stepped round the circle to give Yuuka’s mossy hair an affectionate ruffle.

“Na, you’ve clearly taken her in as a magician’s apprentice now Alice, I wouldn’t want to get in the way – unless you wanna let me take over the spell whilst you go sew her a red plaid witch hat!”

Yuuka laughed and pulled Marisa down into her arms, grasping at her hat. They tussled playfully on the floor until Yuuka managed to pluck it from Marisa’s head, leaving chalky fingerprints in the black felt.

“You know,” said Alice, ignoring the commotion as she took a book from the pile, “my mother said to me once that Yuuka Kazami should never be allowed to learn magic, for the good of us all.”

“I tried once,” Yuuka shrugged, “gave up after a few days because I got bored. And it was all your mother’s fault, yknow, she was so powerful and flashy. Made it look easy.”

“Yeah I remember that,” laughed Marisa, “Alice, you know why she got bored – she didn’t want to study so she just made me do fancy looking spells on repeat whilst she watched. ‘Course I got more outa it than she did because I got her to show me some of her tricks in return.”

Yuuka gave Marisa’s cheek a pinch, and proceeded to curl up into her lap.

Alice smiled. “Marisa’s failings as a teacher are all that’s keeping the universe safe from Yuuka Kazami’s reign of chaos, then.”

“More than happy to make up for that now, though!” Marisa replied, “Say, Alice – why don’t we teach Yuuka some proper magic? There’s really nothin quite like getting up to stuff that’d make your parents lose their shit. Trust me, I’m a pro.”

Yuuka reached out a lazy arm to tug at Alice’s skirts as she moved in around the circle, chalk in one hand, book in the other. “Yeah, come on Alice,“ she smiled, “let me in on the fun.”

“What’re these for?” Yuuka yawned, “Recipe books? Shoulda brought them down earlier when Marisa was burning my breakfast.”

Marisa, still sleepy-eyed, murmured something about it being supposed to be crispy like that, and Alice leant over to refill her coffee cup.

“Aren’t we doing this?” She said, “Teaching you magic properly? They are recipe books of a sort – grimoires to study from. The best way to start, in my experience, is to memorise these tables of correspondences, run your own experiments, and record your process and results in your own book. I found you a blank one – look, it has a red cover.”

Yuuka handled the book tentatively, flashing Alice a cautious smile.

“When I was starting out,” continued the dollmaker, “I would study for four hours in the morning and spend the afternoon on spells or collecting material. It’s already nine, but you can get a couple of hours work in before lunch. I’ll help you get started, here-“

“Now now Alice, where’s the fun in this?”

“Fun?”

“I thought I was pretty clear about that. I don’t really want to become a witch, just learn a couple of pretty spells to show off to Reimu.”

“Yeah it’s good for that,” Marisa piped up, “come on, Alice – let’s just take her into the woods and tell her what all the different mushrooms do or something. That’s sort of how I learned. Just poking about and occasionally blowing shit up.”

Alice sighed. “You’re right, I’m sorry – Marisa’s haphazard methodology is far closer to Yuuka’s style than any standard of academic rigour. I’ll pack a picnic then, shall I?”

“You give up easy,” teased Marisa.

“Tactics. Some battles aren’t worth fighting,” Alice plucked one of the grimoires out of a confused Yuuka’s hands. “Oh, of course - you don’t read Latin, do you?”

“I dunno if I can even read this alphabet,” Yuuka leaned in to Alice’s shoulder, planting a light kiss on her cheek, “I also dunno about the mushrooms. Isn’t it too nice a day to spend in a dark forest? And if we’re doing this for me – well – why don’t you take me out and tell me what fantastical magic properties all the different flowers have instead?”

“Oh well then,” laughed Marisa, “that sounds like it could be really dangerous for us all in the long run. Let’s go.”

Alice simply smiled, and set about collecting up a picnic – but not before she had returned the kiss.

Notes:

yes of COURSE alice COULD get the dolls to help her draw the magic circle but why would she want to do that with two whole girlfriends in the house

Chapter 3: Hecatia/Junko: Secrets

Notes:

I guess this is kind of about secrets. The other prompt for today was 'devotion', which is sort of mixed in here as well.

Content warning for mentions of violence.

She doesn’t know this, and I don’t quite know how to tell her – but I used to be more of a goddess of the moon. The depths of hell too, of course, and black magic, and crossroads, and all those things which people find frightening and incomprehensible but still can’t deny the weird, uncanny sacredness of. But yeah. Also the moon. Back then nobody really knew what the moon was – a hole in the sphere of the heavens through which a white fire shone, the chariot of Selene, a world with a strange, alien society (well, the Pythagoreans and good old Lucian weren’t too far off). But then Mr Parmenides concluded that the real, common-sense substance of the moon was a reflective surface, shining with ‘αλλοτριον φως’ – the light of another, the light of the sun. And that struck a chord with me. Yeah, even more than the old mystique and otherworldly terror which had, I guess, given birth to a fair few aspects of my existence.

You see, I am a mirror to the sun, and I always have been. Not just in the sense of an opposite, night against day, but as a surface which projects its light onto the world in a different manner, strange and terrible. It’s easy to tell people that oh yeah it’s Apollo I’m thinking of as the sun (I did used to get mixed up with his sister a fair bit), but that’s just because people started getting Helios and Apollo mixed up at some point, and now when you speak of the former they think of the latter anyway. It’s annoying, but times change. Anyway, this Helios - he has a family chock full of witches. Why’s that? Why would the sun-god’s daughters and granddaughters turn to the powers of the moon, the dark, the grim underworld? It's because the moon is the other side of sunlight. It takes that familiar brightness and strips away all of its warmth, leaving it cold and uncanny. Ideal mood lighting for dark-hearted magic and nefarious plots.

But that’s kinda beside the point. Well, it’s a preamble. Thing is, the sun as reflected in the mirror of the moon, amplified by my power as a god, has a sort of awful beauty which utterly bewitches me. I’m talking about the girls here, of course. The witches. Junko – she probably wouldn’t call herself a witch, and I wouldn’t call her one either. But even so, I think I’m dancing the same dance with her as I have done before, oh so long ago; reflecting (refracting?) other suns. I like to watch them burn.

But that’s kinda awkward, isn’t it? It’s always a bit weird when you end up dating someone just a bit too similar to an old ex, in ways that aren’t just a regular ‘type’ but are like... ‘Bloodthirsty drive for vengeance eating her up from the inside, comes with themes of infanticide’. It’s just not the sort of thing you can talk about, so it goes unsaid until you break up and then you become the ex who had the weird fixation on helping her girlfriends kill people with evil magic. Not that I’d describe myself like that, right. And Junko probably wouldn’t either. But she would, if she ever found out. She’d laugh.

And I don’t want to break up with Junko. She’s golden, bright, warm - people who don’t know her well think she’s an emotionless husk, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. She feels things very strongly, and she acts on what she feels. Never a dull moment. As I said, it’s bewitching. But that’s also, well, why I don’t know how she’d react if I told her that I’d been here before. Nobody thinks about stories from the perspective of the gods. When you’re this old, the cycles of fate, grand wheels of human error and desire – become mere acts in the drama of your long life. Possibly Junko would think nothing of it; knowing that my assistance (and my love) folds her actions within the circumference of one of these wheels. But it makes me think.

I like melodramas. I like violent emotions, acts of daring, the sort of women who turn men into pigs or wage war on the moon. And I don’t intend to change. But I wonder – if there is any catharsis here, who is it for?

So sometimes I dunno. I dunno. What good is the moon when the sun burns out into a black hole?

Notes:

I have a classics degree and I'm not afraid to use it. Junko is reading Euripides' Medea.

Chapter 4: Eirin/Kaguya: Pre-Gensokyo/Historical

Notes:

Originally titled 'Scholar's Rock'. This is adapted from a draft I wrote for the first chapter of a fic about Eirin and Kaguya's relationship! Unfortunately I don't think it's something I'll ever be able to complete, because it would require me to do far more research than I really have time for.

The long life of Eirin Yagokoro (thus we are compelled to call her, since our sources tell us that her true Lunarian name is beyond the comprehension of us earthlings) was changed for all eternity one early morning when the wind was high. She had had a sleepless night in the administrative centre of the moon. Spirits had been high, crises imminent and averted, and as Eirin made her way homeward through a garden court at the edge of the complex, she worried that the adrenaline still pumping through her veins would barely let her rest. The early morning light on the moon was a hazy dreamlike blue, and to her dazed eyes the world looked like a painting; solid shapes floating down from a substanceless mist.

Glancing absently through the gnarled holes in the great scholar’s rock which formed the centerpiece of the court, Eirin noticed a flicker of pale pink. As she rounded the next corner, the figure came into view; a young woman, alone and richly dressed. Unusual as it was for someone like a daughter of a high-ranking official to be wandering around at such an early hour with no attendants, Eirin paid her no heed. As they came to opposite ends of the eastern walkway, a gust of wind took the girl by surprise and her silken shawl was snatched from her shoulders. It whipped through the air like a kite, and caught, daintily, on one of the crags in the middle of the rock.

The girl wheeled around. Eirin paused, uncertain if she had been noticed in the shadow of the awning. But before she could either offer assistance or slip back into the shadows and avoid a tiresome encounter, the figure in pink began to hitch back her sleeves. She turned to look directly at Eirin with what might have been a smile, and then plucked up her skirts and clambered over the balustrade of the court and up onto the scholar’s rock.

Now, this was far from proper behavior for an aristocratic young lady - far from proper behavior for anyone who might have business in the halls of state. Eirin watched, astounded, as she scrambled to the top of the rock and rose unsteadily to her feet. Her skirts whipped around her legs in a flurry of silk, translucent robe billowing like a sail in a storm. Silhouetted against the milky blue sky she looked very fragile, as if the wind might snap her like a thread; and Eirin instinctively started forwards as she began to take unsteady steps towards the snag.

As she made her wavering way, a particularly strong gust of wind shot over the rooftops and buffeted her backwards, right in the face. The girl caught hold of a crag and steadied her footing, but the wind had grabbed at her hair and pulled it out of its knot. A rich black mass streamed out behind her, night-dark even in the morning haze. Like ink, Eirin thought. A bolder stroke in the painting.

It was a bewitching sight. One of her hairpins broke the silence, dashed to the walkway by the wind. It landed just in front of Eirin. As she moved to pick it up, the girl turned down to look at her again. Eirin met her gaze, but it is not for us to record her expression. So stunned was she by princess Kaguya’s look that to this day she wonders what it was that her own face betrayed in that moment. The princess laughed - a clear, musical peal which cut through the murmur of the wind like a knife through paper, and turned away.

She removed the scarf from the snag with a delicate flourish (quite unlike her other movements, it made her seem almost dignified), and then clambered back down the way she had come. Eirin advanced to meet her, holding out the hairpin, but at a loss for words. Rather, she felt like laughing. The girl’s impudence, her big dark eyes - had felt fresher than any wind which had blown over the moon for a thousand years.

These eyes now met Eirin’s once more. “Thanks,” she smirked, “help me fix my hair, will you?” She handed the bewildered sage a ribbon and then turned around, twisting her locks above her head to reveal the nape of her milky neck. How forward! Flirtatious, even, but that was too daring a thought. Eirin complied. “I’m no hairdresser,” was all she could say. (Hers she preferred to keep simple, resenting the arduous process of having it pinned up every morning by an army of rabbits).

“Oh, don’t fret about that - it just needs to be up so I don’t look like some bedraggled waif who washed up on the shore of the Mare Tranquilis.” Eirin wrestled with the hair in silence until she judged it presentable. Its makeshift simplicity jarred against the young lady’s expensive silks and heavy jewelry, but she could do no more. Trusting her judgement, the girl turned back around with a smile and what might have been a wink. “Thanks awfully for putting up with me, I owe you for that!” Little point in handing out a favour to a stranger, Eirin thought. An introduction would have been polite, but “My pleasure,” was all she replied.

“I’ll be on my way then,” laughed the girl, “it was lovely to meet you, lady Yagokoro!”
Before Eirin had a chance to respond, she gathered up her robes and hurried down the portico like a gust of the capricious morning wind.

Eirin had been acting under the beguiling assumption that the woman had no idea who she was; that in her haggard state she had been unrecognised, mistaken for a low-ranking bureaucrat and treated accordingly. On this assumption she had thought it strange at first that the girl had not asked her to retrieve the scarf. But now she was even more confused. She had been recognised (from the offset? From the look on the rock? Her mind raced) and a deliberate decision had been made to flaunt the unspoken rules of propriety right in front of her face in a wild and awkward dance. Why? Was it really a flirtation? Or simply an exuberant impulse which had taken the girl to exalt, just for a moment, in an act of inconsequential subversity?

Still beguiled and bewildered, Eirin made her way home with the image of the nameless princess standing stark against the sky with her black hair fanning out behind her like the wings of a crow burning in her mind.

Notes:

I have strong childhood memories of seeing massive ornamental scholars rocks (gongshi/供石) in parks in China, including at least one which I think people were allowed to climb on - because it had little stairways and bridges in it? But that might have been something different. I'm thinking about stuff like this, but most of the pictures and information and I can find are about the smaller, desk-sized ones.

Chapter 5: Yuyuko/Yukari: Hurt

Notes:

This chapter is a bit darker/heavier than the previous ones. Content warning for body horror, extensive discussion of death and food, mentions of youkai eating people.

That spring, there was one patch of ground on which the snow was slow to melt.

Summer came on, and still not a blossom nor a leaf had sprouted on the old cherry which grew there. Hardly an incident. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the fairies insisted that it wasn’t dead.

A cold summer in a land full of ghosts, but never so cold that the trees failed to bear fruit; cherries so red they were almost black. They hung above you in a dark mass as you sat beneath the trees, like the hungry eyes of carrion crows. Guess I was hungry myself, then. I opened my mouth, and Yuyuko, smiling serenely, fed me like a mother bird. Sweet. Sweeter than usual, actually. The lower temperature in the Netherworld usually means that its fruit is small and sour, which I rather like. It’s a change from the shrine’s cherries, which are massive, juicy, slightly sacherine. Yuyuko leaned over to kiss me, but I couldn’t stay long that day.

I decided to sleep on it.

I’ve wondered what it’s like, sometimes. Having dreams over which one has no control, vague and bizarre and then completely forgotten the next morning. I do a lot of work in my dreams but let me tell you, lucidity can be a curse.

CHERRY: Lady Yakumo? Were the cherries to your liking?
YOUKAI: Yes, thankyou.
CHERRY: Oh, I’m so glad - I thought - uh, I forgot that...
YOUKAI: What is it?
CHERRY: Don’t you eat people rather than fruit?
YOUKAI: Oh, well, as a youkai, I... I do eat fruit, and normal food! Your cherries were delicious.
CHERRY: Normal food? Is human food more normal to you than youkai food?
YOUKAI: Euphemistic.
CHERRY: Which tastes better?
YOUKAI: What?
CHERRY: Oh come on, I want to know!
YOUKAI: You’re a strange girl.
CHERRY: Cherries or human flesh?
YOUKAI: Cherries are sweeter.
CHERRY: Aren’t I sweet?
YOUKAI: I don’t want to eat you, Yuyuko.
CHERRY: I’m poisonous, aren’t I. I’d make you sick.
YOUKAI: No, no you wouldn’t.
CHERRY: But my power would! The death thing - most Youkai won’t come near me.
YOUKAI: Oh, literally... I suppose so. Well, I won’t eat you then. I’ll stick with sweeter tastes.

This is a script I know. But if I was in charge here, I wouldn’t run it. Something’s gotten into me.

CHERRY: You know what I don’t like - I don’t like it when people say that death is coming for them.
YAKUMO: Why?
CHERRY: Because death is already there! If you’re a human, death is always inside your body. Waiting.
YAKUMO: That’s a funny way of looking at it. I suppose you’re right.
CHERRY: Of course I am! I’m the number one expert on death.
YAKUMO: How can you be an expert on death if you haven’t actually died?
CHERRY: I just said! I’m a human, so death is already part of me. Say, I suppose that’s not how it is with youkai, though? Maybe when humans turn into youkai that’s like.. Death leaving their bodies?
YAKUMO: Never thought of that. But lotsa humans turn into youkai by dying, or instead of dying - at the moment when they would normally pass on.
CHERRY: Sooo... Death is the inhumanity inborn in all humans.
YAKUMO: Gosh, you’re feeling philosophical tonight, dearest.
CHERRY: It’s for your ears only, my love. So, - it’s normally humans who try and kill youkai, right?
YAKUMO: Not exclusively, but - go on?
CHERRY: So, youkai extermination is like sending a human thing - death - into a youkai’s body. Dying makes the youkai more like a human, right? It’s like feeding them death.
YAKUMO: That’s certainly a thesis. More sake?
CHERRY: Yes!! It always hurts, doesn’t it - having something inside you which shouldn’t be there. That’s why I don’t think death is like a wound or a weapon. It’s yours! It’s always in you. Not in you, I mean.
YAKUMO: Isn’t it? There’s more than one way to eat death, my love. More than one way to eat anything, if you’re so keen on talking metaphorically.
CHERRY: Oh? Go on?

This is rotten. Beyond their sell-by-dates, fruits of knowledge only tell you what you already know.

CHERRY: I’ll miss eating when I’m dead.
YUKARI: Ghosts can still eat, if they’re powerful enough to hold a human shape. And you can eat in Hell, if they let you.
CHERRY: Oh, guess I won’t miss it then.
YUKARI: Would you want to eat?
CHERRY: Yeah, of course.
YUKARI: Let me put it this way - in death, would you still want to have a body that needs or desires food? That takes pleasure from eating? If you’re so comfortable with the thought of dying, Yuyuko, you should be comfortable with the idea of letting go of yourself.
CHERRY: Oh.
YUKARI: I’m sorry. That was insensitive.
CHERRY: No, I understand. It’s just..
YUKARI: Just?
CHERRY: If I could be me, but somewhere else, that would be nice. Somewhere that isn’t in this body and isn’t in this place. There’s not much for me here. I know I know it’s stupid to think of death as a fantastic escape-
YUKARI: It is, but it’s a total escape. Not a partial one.
CHERRY: And you would know.
YUKARI: I know plenty of dead people.
CHERRY: Ok.
YUKARI: I’m not trying to be harsh, Yuyuko. I’m worried about you.
CHERRY: You’re not trying to be comforting. Come on. I’ll forgive you, let’s forget about it.
YUKARI: Weren’t you saying that you didn’t want to forget yourself?
CHERRY: Come on Yukari, play along.
YUKARI: You always say - that selves are made up of the things you’ve eaten, the things you’ve taken inside you. How do you expect your soul to remember what you were without your body?
CHERRY: Well, you always tell me that eating is a metaphor. What’s wrong, Yukari? What’s gotten into you today?

I put some thicker gloves on and went back to Hakugyoukuro.

Those cherries, I asked her - were they really just from your garden? Yes, she said. And they were freshly picked - you hadn’t done anything to them? No, not at all - had they made me sick? Ouch. I said nothing. What to tell her? The taste had been familiar, but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it. As if they were an old variety which had been forgotten or bred differently in modern Japan. Well, there hadn’t been any new varieties of cherries in the world of the dead for who knows how long. She laughed. But then she went on. There were a few mixed in there from an... Experiment she’d been cooking up. (Cooking?). Next year, we’d have even more cherries! Maybe more than we could eat, even us two (she laughed again). She didn’t want to waste them, though. There were plenty of ways to keep a cherry good; they could always be sun-dried, pickled in sake, or preserved with lots of sugar.

Notes:

goblin market / red flavor / bad apple

Chapter 6: Yukari/Reimu: Date

Notes:

CW for mild horror content, I guess? Nothing that grim or scary, though.
This story also largely assumes that you're familiar with Dolls in Pseudo Paradise and some of the common basic fan interpretations of the tale and the art for the CD.

It was a warm and comfortable day, and I didn’t really feel like doing anything at all. So much so that I’d forgotten to offer Yukari tea, so she’d made it herself and hadn’t given me any. I don’t know anyone else who can turn the act of tea-drinking into a tease. So I took her fan, and tried, ineffectually, to give the same impression. She didn’t snatch it back.

“Reimu, do you want to go and investigate something with me? Like a mystery.” It was the most either of us had said all day.
“I’m sorry - you want to do something? If there’s an incident, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
Yukari laughed warmly. “No, no, it’s just something I thought might be fun. A date.”
I squinted up at her, suspicious. “I thought you knew everything. What mystery could there be in Gensokyo that you didn’t cause yourself?” A pause. “Getting inspiration from Satori, are you?”
“Oh, there is something nostalgic to me about her approach. She doesn’t just want to find answers, she wants to find stories. And in doing so, she tells them.”
“Investigation isn’t storytelling, it’s my job. If you want to go out on a date let’s do something fun or romantic instead.”
Yukari put her tea down and looked me intensely in the eyes. After all these years, it still made my chest tighten.

“Reimu, there’s a difference between beating people up until they stop causing problems and weaving together the threads of a story with someone you love. Finding the answer is secondary to the process. Two ways of looking at the world interlocking with one another to discover something which amounts to more than the objective truth of the incident – what could be more romantic than that?
“That’s the shitttiest investigative methodology I’ve ever heard,” I laughed. She laughed too.
“Did you have some puzzle in mind, then?” I asked.
“The truth is – I’ve been having a recurring dream about a place which feels familiar to me. But I don’t know why.”
Something was off about that sentence. “Can’t you just get Ran to run a location search on it? And I thought you had super dream powers anyway.”

“Both of those things are true.” She looked down at her tea, pensive, “I’ve located it already – a mountain shack in the outside world. And of course I just leave the dream and go and do my own thing. But that’s what I meant about taking a different approach. I don’t think that I can just solve this anomaly with bare facts. I think there’s a story here, and I want to know what it is.” There was a wistful tone to her words which struck me as unfamiliar. Our eyes were still locked, but somehow I didn’t feel as if she was talking to me at all.

“Huh. A date to an abandoned building in the outside world. If we’re not there for long, I’m sure Gensokyo won’t burn to the ground without me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Yukari perked up again and winked at me, “But that’ll just mean more fun for us when we get back!”
She promised me food and sake, so we set out.

It really was a shack, and it really was abandoned. Undergrowth had made its way up through floorboards which I wasn’t sure were safe to walk on (we hovered, tentatively), and a large part of the roof had caved in. I prodded absently at the debris with my gohei, only half-listening to Yukari as she mumbled something about how people in the outside world thought abandoned places like this were really cool and romantic, and how they’d put themselves in all sorts of danger to take photographs in them. She asked me if I wanted a picture and I said no. Who knew what spirits might be lurking here? A camera is a dangerous thing, in my line of work.

There was still something heavy and listless about the day, even outside the barrier (where somehow, I always expect the air to be fresher – like going out into the open on a stuffy summer day). The forest was almost wailing with a cacophony of cicadas, and the noise made my head feel thick and foggy. Nothing for it but to sit down on the veranda, as we had done at the shrine, and crack out the sake. For all the atmosphere, the view was worse. The place was extremely well hidden – I couldn’t even see a track, let alone a road, and a thick canopy of trees blotched out the afternoon sun.
“Did you hope,” I ventured, “that coming here and drinking would make you remember something?”
“Something like that”, Yukari yawned, and rested her head in my lap. I took a sip of sake, and glanced back into the house. The open door, leading into that strange, gaping room, wasn’t something I really wanted to turn my back on.

There was something on the far wall which I hadn’t noticed during my half-hearted poke around the room. It was one of those cross symbols, paraphernalia from a western faith. Sakuya had showed me a big gold one once, which had been pulled out of a household shrine in the mansion and locked in the basement. It made Remilia uncomfortable or something. I didn’t ask why. This one was much smaller – made of wood, I assumed, and seemingly not accompanied by the trappings of a shrine. It reignited my waning interest, so I got up to take a closer look. Yukari murmured a complaint, but didn’t follow.

The Scarlet Devil Mansion’s cross had a little man on it, but this one was plain and weathered. Looking down the wall, I noticed another nail, and a spattering of broken glass beneath it on the floor. A clue! I called my lazy monster girlfriend back over. “This yours?” I joked, gesturing to the cross. “Doubt it,” she replied. When I pointed out the glass, she seemed to regain some of her spark as well. “What a natural born detective you are, Reimu – there must have been a mounted photograph here – shall we look for it, hm?”
“That’s more like it – you take that side of the room, and I’ll search this one!” I peeked through a nearby gap in the floorboards. Weeds. Yukari, meanwhile, had duly turned her attention to the collapsed roof, peering into the dark corner behind the half-fallen beams. “Reimu, come and look here,” she called. She had a light – a torch, and put her arm around my waist as I came to examine the narrow gap.

There were great, long scratches on the walls. The kind of scratches that humans in Gensokyo would insist were from a bear or a wolf if you asked them, because no one likes to think too hard about the true strength of the youkai. They didn’t look too old, either. Not fresh, but not old.
“It’s always youkai.” I rolled my eyes. “What else,” replied Yukari, “were you expecting?” I didn’t have an answer to that. She flashed her light on the floor, and we noticed something pale half-hidden under the debris. Excited, I knelt down to lift the rotting wood, and Yukari gingerly pulled it out. What a delight! An old photograph, as per. There was a tear in the middle (the claw?), but nobody’s face had been ripped out or anything. That would have been fun.

We took the picture out into the daylight of the veranda. Yukari said it was clearly old – monochrome and faded to sepia. And, she went on, the clothes suggested that it was taken in the earlier part of the last century. They looked like regular clothes to me. In the photo was a group of people, clearly staged in a photographer’s studio. But rather than sitting politely in rows, they had been posed to look as if they were walking down a road, packs on their backs and a carefully positioned array of pebbles at their feet – which did absolutely nothing to enhance the naturalism of the image. It was an odd picture, awkwardly funny in its contrived artlessness. But something struck me about the group itself: seven men a young western-looking woman with blonde hair. I gave a start. “Yukari! I know this story!”
“What?” She didn’t look convinced – which surprised me. I went on.

“Don’t you know that old Gensokyo legend? About the eight humans who wandered in from the outside world and got picked off one by one in the woods? My predecessor used to tell it to me all the time – as a cautionary tale about humans turning into youkai, I think. Wasn’t it a common tale?”

Yukari looked thoughtfully at the photograph. “I heard of the incident, but never in detail. Humans becoming youkai is in the Hakurei shrine maiden's jurisdiction, not mine.”
“But isn’t this cool? It’s like figuring out the truth behind an old local legend, something only we can solve because of your powers. Not solving – I mean – like you said earlier – making the story our own, together.” I took her hand, but it was tense, and she wouldn’t look at me. No big deal. You have to take Yukari as she comes. Unexpected things send her into unexpected moods.

“You liked this story?” She asked eventually.
“Not especially, it was really creepy. But she really liked telling it. It’s one of the strongest memories I have of her.”
“Well, the truth is that I never really got involved in the whole affair because – you know she didn’t like having me around – she extremely cagey about the incident.”
“So she was the shrine maiden in the tale then?”
“She didn’t make that clear?”
“Nope. I would ask, but I always got brushed off. If that’s the case, then… All she did was dance a kagura above a lake in a storm, which accidentally lured someone to their death. Or else that person went and turned into a youkai? I’m not sure.” I poured myself another cup of sake.
“She told you the tale in detail, then?”
“Yeah, always pretty much the same.” I rattled it off to her – if I remembered correctly – trying to keep things simple and clear. Yukari listened with what I can only describe as hesitant interest. Something had gotten to her.

“I wonder,” she said, thoughtfully, “who told her the rest of the story?” Before I could think too hard about this, she went on: “I’ll tell you one thing, though. I know where I’ve seen this place before, now. Many years after this affair (I presume), and shortly before you were left in her care, she asked me to fix the gap in the barrier through which the outsiders had travelled. If she hadn’t, I’d barely know anything of the entire matter. The hole itself was so tiny and well-hidden that I hadn’t even noticed it.”
“And that gap was here, right? The peach tree? By the honest men’s house in the mountains!”
“Yes. Round the back of this building. It was abandoned back then too, but it wasn’t quite so derelict.”
“I wonder if the gap opened up again? And that’s why you’re having the dreams?”
Yukari looked aside again. “That would be unusual.” She muttered.

The peach tree was not a pretty sight. The claw marks were deeper her, as if – and neither of us wanted to say it – something had been trying to dig its way inside. It was still upright and in leaf, though, so whatever we were up against had some degree of anger management. Worse, however, was the straw doll. Yeah, like the one from the story. It hung limply from a knot in the centre of the tree, nailed only by one arm. Ouch. I didn’t really know what to do. Yukari still looked uncomfortable, plucking at her glove. When I turned to her, expectantly, she simply shrugged. “There’s no gap in the barrier here.”

For all this ‘romantic’ storytelling, it had turned out to be one of those days where it felt as if we were walking in different worlds. Thinking back to her ‘methodology’ – in the end, we hadn’t seen anything today through the same eyes. Well, I know that’s true – literally – but whatever this story meant to her, it was ten thousand miles way from my mundane, human curiosity.

“Let’s go home,” I said, “I know we haven’t worked out what’s happened here or what’s going on with your dreams but – I was just thinking – why don’t you investigate there instead?”
“All alone?” Huh. I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I’m not really bothered by the whole thing. I just thought it would be fun to look into with you.” A lie. Sometimes she is easy to read, but only because she wants to be. And she knows I don’t like to give up, even when I don’t know what I’m doing.
“Well, take me with you into the dream, then. I know you can do that. Remember last winter?”
That brought back her regular sinister smile. “Oh, that’s an idea. Home to bed, then? I shan’t be afraid of the monster in my dreams if you’re there with me, Reimu!”

I slept clutching my gohei and with ofuda tucked into my sleeves, which Yukari thought was hilarious. I guess she could have gapped them in for me, but somehow I didn’t think of that and she, naughtily, didn’t offer. She fell asleep first, apparently, because she was waiting for me in the shack when I manifested there. She gave me a kiss, and turned as if to leave for the tree, but I tugged at her sleeve and pulled her back. Around behind the debris, the photo had vanished from the floor. Yukari pulled it out of her pocket – presumably the dream version, which had turned up along with her dress from earlier today. I say this, because it wasn’t the same picture. It was a faded colour print of a blonde woman in a veil and a blue dress. “The virgin Mary,” said Yukari, “I suppose this is the real picture, and what we found merely a lure.” I wasn’t so sure, because it looked as if the image’s arm was bleeding. But Yukari didn’t comment on that. I took her hand as we walked out of the building and around towards the peach tree.

As it came into view, everything went dark. It didn’t vanish, I think, because I could still feel the grass beneath my feet; but the cicada song ceased abruptly, leaving a hollow, heavy silence. Yukari took her hand out of mine, and I heard her fingers snap. In a flash, a multitude of eyes opened up in the darkness behind her, light flaring out of their brilliant irises. They illuminated nothing but the two of us. The void was empty, but I was sure that we were still in the forest. A leaf brushed against my head, and I reached up to touch the branch. It was perfectly solid.

A moment after Yukari hit the lights, something began to grope towards us out of the black. Two great skeletal hands, a pale sickly yellow, followed by – well, I didn’t get a good look at it’s face, if I’m honest. The hands shot out towards Yukari, but in one elegant swoop she opened a gap in front of it, directing its claws into its own arm instead. A howling, screeching wail cut through the silence. I saw the thing’s mouth, gaping like a pit, all red and cracked -and its eyes, round and wide with pain. I looked away, back to Yukari. The harsh light of the eyes cut odd lines across her face, angular and strange. She was shouting, or laughing at the creature. But I couldn’t hear her.

Well, I knew what I had to do, and I had a pretty good idea of how to do it. I took a gamble, and charged at the youkai, slamming its flailing body in what I hoped was the direction of the peach tree. And I didn’t miss! Yukari evidently snapped out of her daze and caught on, because a flurry of pale hands shot out of her gaps, holding it down as I prepared the seal. I bound it fast, and we woke up.

It really was the hour to go nailing dolls into trees, now, but I didn’t think either of us were going to get back to sleep. Yukari had left to fetch some water, and I sat cross-legged on my futon, pulling the remaining ofuda out of my sleeves. Yukari returned – on foot, I noticed – and glided back down beside me, calm and quiet. So, there we were again. Together in silence. I broke it this time: “Why didn’t you want to let it in? Wasn’t Gensokyo built for youkai?” She smiled. “Personal grudge. It was rude of it to mess with my dreams.” Another silence. “Guess it’d gotten pretty weak in the outside world, with no one afraid of it and all.” Yukari flopped back down into bed without answering me.

Just when I thought she’d fallen asleep, she spoke again. “Reimu, if you weren’t from Gensokyo -would you want to come and live here?”
“I’m a human, I wouldn’t have the same need to come here as youkai do.”
“I’m asking you as a human – or else, if you’d visited and then left, would you want to return?”
Far too much to think about for two in the morning. “Depends.” I shrugged. “But if I’d met you in Gensokyo - then I think I’d want to come back.”

Notes:

This isn't to be taken as an actual theory about DiPP or what happens in it, I just wanted to play around with some of the ideas it raises. I actually ended up contradicting some of my own headcanons about what happens to the blonde girl later on.

Chapter 7: Renko/Maribel: Free Day!

Notes:

Please turn the workskin on to view this chapter! Although it's not the only one in this collection which is kind of incomprehensible without the formatting. Please turn on the workskin for my other chapters, too! I have no idea what this looks like on mobile and I don't even want to find out.
CW for discussion of mental illness.

hey renko babe what day is it? like the date

 

 

It’s Sunday January the 22nd 2096! And it’s 23 07 and 13 seconds

 

 

Cant you see the date on ur computer?

 

 

the way things are going, i could be messaging renko from last week or renko from tomorrow for all i can tell

 

 

 

 

god

 

 

The visions are that bad today?

 

 

yeah

 

 

Whether its past or future or present merry i love u anyway! Is ur essay going ok?

 

 

no

 

 

Ok have you eaten?

 

 

i managed that much, for once

 

 

Hell yeah!

 

 

💜

 

 

Do you want me to come round or are u gonna be ok

 

 

no, i think that would just be distracting in more ways than one

 

 

Yeah but merry u can’t stay up all night on that essay otherwise you’ll just be a somnolent husk tomorrow and then you’ll get ANOTHER essay

 

 

i know i know but if i don’t hand this in it’ll be the second one in a row

 

 

what can i do?

 

 

i cant go tell the student counselling service that my superpowers are getting in the way of my work, can i?

 

 

Well ur superpowers are making u depressed

 

 

Dissociation is a real thing

 

 

yes but i dont have a good reason for it

 

 

they’ve got the documents from the sanatorium which say i don’t have psychosis or anything

 

 

Ur a student! Ur overworked! I used to dissociate at school just because i had anxiety lmao

 

 

Also they know that you’ve been through some stuff and that you were having hallucinations

 

 

I know they aren’t really hallucinations but ygm

 

 

counselling and medication cant help me though

 

 

Yeah but you could get a support document that they can send to your lecturers and tutors

 

 

I have one for asd and stuff and as I said you’ve got plenty of official medical evidence that ur not ok

 

 

maybe. but i can’t get that done tonight.

 

 

i’ve got this thing half written but i keep seeing windows on my screen looking out onto a temple yard or i blink and for a second my room is a forest and i can’t even fucking see what i’m writing let alone think

 

 

 

 

renko honestly i’m scared, i can’t stop thinking about how i’m probably going to fail my degree because of this

 

 

and even if i don’t, how could i fucking work?

 

 

if i became a therapist id get fired for talking to the person in the room from the 19th century instead of the present, if i go into some business career ill be zoning out all the time and forget things, if i try and become an academic it’d just be pressure and pressure and deadlines and teaching just like this but worse and it’d never end

 

 

 

 

god, im sorry for dumping that all on you renko

 

 

It’s ok im glad to know how you’re feeling

 

 

thank you 💜

 

 

Did you just want to vent or do u want to talk about it?

 

 

ugh if i can write essays about my woes for you i should be able to write my real one

 

 

Sorry to keep u but i have actually been thinking about this a bit recently? Like about what you were saying abt jobs bc i know you’ve mentioned it before

 

 

oh yeah?

 

 

You know I’m on a career path to go right into a really high-paying tech job right? Like with the internships I’ve done

 

 

I’m rly lucky, it’s usually the engineers who get this sort of thing 😂 😂

 

 

but big companies sponsor labs for unified physicists and fund their research so long as they do work for them as well

 

 

you’re not lucky, it’s because so you’re so brilliantly clever 💜

 

 

Bby ❤️ yeah like I’d rather work for a university but honestly even our unis labs r half owned by a company theres not much difference anymore

 

 

also I need a secure job and you need to live as well!

 

 

me?

 

 

Yeah yeah so I was thinking that maybe if we moved in together after university and you’re still really really struggling and can’t work then we could like… Share my salary kind of?

 

 

I can pay all the rent at least

 

 

Sorry if you don’t like the sound of that i know you’d really like to be independent ideally

 

 

and it’d leave you in a bad place if we ever broke up but it’s an idea to work on!

 

 

just an idea

 

 

oh my god renko please let me be your 1950s housewife

 

 

fuck

 

 

i love you

 

 

thank you

 

 

You’re up for it?

 

 

well, we’d need to talk though the details very carefully, but yes.

 

 

are you sure your starting salary could support that?

 

 

Well I don’t care about having a particularly opulent lifestyle

 

 

Haha I’m so used to student living

 

 

What would I even do all on my own if I was any richer than I am now?

 

 

But yeah I’ll do some research and we can talk a bit about budgeting

 

 

even if it wasn’t a permanent financial solution, it could give me some space? space which i really don’t have right now.

 

 

to sort myself out a bit.

 

 

Yeah!

 

 

i’ve thought that i’d like to work as a writer of some sort – a journalist or essayist or something.

 

 

but that’s too big a risk to bet on money-wise.

 

 

so i could spend some time trying to hone my skill without worrying about the fact that i can’t keep my job in starbucks because i’ve handed customers cups of the hourai elixir by mistake 🙃

 

 

Yes! Merry you’re really good at writing!

 

 

lmao i know its what i’m failing to do right now

 

 

but with some time and space i could learn to live with my powers better as well, i think.

 

 

maybe

 

 

Uni is really bad for that

 

 

Yeah 🙃

 

 

It could really work out if, idk, we wanted to get married in the future

 

 

absolutely! yes i think it really could so long as we’re prepared to put in the effort needed to make it work.

 

 

We can do it I know - I love you merry

 

 

i love you too so much

 

 

 

 

gosh this is weird to me

 

 

sorry it’s like

 

 

i never really thought that i would have any kind of realistic long term future.

 

 

for so long my life has felt like its just going to collapse in on itself eventually, past on future, here on there

 

 

and swallow me up or something and leave you behind forever.

 

 

ive thought more about running away with you to another world than about planning my life after uni.

 

 

but now there it is. the two of us in a scruffy tokyo apartment

 

 

you at a job in a horrible big sleek corporate powerhouse, me at my laptop trying to think up ideas for short stories as i watch a waterfall on a distant mountain.

 

 

wow

 

 

Yeah merry most people dream more about domestic bliss than moving to the otherworld! It’s a bit weird for me too

 

 

the otherworlds still seem closer.

 

 

like the future is a different sort of distant to the worlds i see

 

 

unrealities are there all the time, the future is coming at you constantly.

 

 

Sure is!

 

 

like my fucking essay deadline oh god

 

 

Merrryyy don’t do it just send an email with your plan and what you’ve already done

 

 

what’s the time?

 

 

23 44 nd 6 seconds

 

 

i can’t write half of it in 15 minutes can i

 

 

No! Unless you slip back in time or something 😂

 

 

maybe one day... i’ll learn to control the time thing.. and i’ll go back to this very moment and finish this essay...

 

 

Future maribel if you’re out there now would be a good time

 

 

i don’t think she’s coming. what a failure i am

 

 

Nooo

 

 

ok ok i’ll take your advice

 

 

And will you come with me to the student support services tomorrow too? Tell your tutor ur gonna do that in your email!

 

 

ok, that’s a good idea

 

 

Only if you actually come

 

 

ok, MAYBE, but only if you take me on a date afterwards.

 

 

I’ll take you on a date to catch up on some sleep how about that

 

 

ok 😉

 

 

😳

 

 

We can start that date now actually! After u send your email

 

 

that is true.

 

 

i’m sorry for keeping you up as well!

 

 

It’s ok if u go to bed I will too!

 

 

alright - good night then renko, i love you so much

 

 

I love u too merry! ❤️❤️❤️

 

 

Notes:

Well, it's been great fun! I decided to do these prompts because I wanted to mess around with multimedia storytelling and practice ways of making comics, and I feel like I've learned a lot! Please do check out the other works for the event in the collection or the twitter tag!