Flamecatcher

by SKOJukebox

Summary:

Mokou wants nothing to do with people, or the problems they bring. She's nothing but a dull flame deep within the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, wanting no one to see its meager light as it burns on and on for eternity.

But people, and their problems, stumble onto her doorstep one unhappy morning and don't seem willing to leave her be. Will she learn how to coexist with people once more, or will her problems turn any chance she has at remembering happiness to nothing but ash?

Chapter 1: An Empty Life

In some ways, things only exist when you stop and take notice of them. Sure, they're there regardless, but if you don't know something exists then it might as well not, right? It goes one way and you go your own, merrily along through different planes of existence. Blissful ignorance.

When you're ageless and deathless (like you’d ever have any chance to use this advice) I find it best to approach things from that perspective. Even better is to not approach it at all. Because, when you stumble up on things with reckless abandon… When you let your guard down, I mean, it starts to rapidly become obvious how thoroughly you're outlasting things. Places that you used to love to go to will begin to look more and more different. People that you care about vanish one by one. Days just seem to get shorter and shorter and shorter and there you are in the midst of it all, the only constant. You and your grief, anyway.

It's like you're an open flame; Alone you burn and burn dauntlessly, but you can't let anything get too close because they'll get set ablaze too. Unlike you, though, in the end, all that's left of them is ash. And you'll get sick and tired of wading through ashes pretty damned fast.

I don't know exactly what had brought my mind to such matters that morning, the sun oozing through the bedroom window in a hateful column through them. I'd awoken from a dreamless sleep feeling so sore that part of me just wanted to close my eyes and forget I existed. It was a brief reprieve; I’d tried to stick to that and nothing but that for a few years, and it ultimately hadn’t been the peaceful paradise it was cracked up to be. Hurt your back.

Either way, I had the misfortune of looking down at myself and I wasn’t going back to sleep no matter how hard I tried after that, I knew. I was a total mess. Blood and dirt were matting my white button-up that I hadn't even bothered to take off after stumbling in late last night. My pants, too, red and baggy and covered with anti-fire seals, were now sporting a myriad of brand new airholes. I could only imagine how my face and hair looked as well. Thanks to the powers of the Hourai elixir, superficial wounds, aches and sores would easily heal given time, but it wasn't going to not make me look like I'd just dragged myself out of a battlefield.

I groaned, sitting up very slowly and trying to piece together both how I’d ended up here, and why I looked like oh-so-much shit. It only took a few seconds of lying there and focusing past the smell of my own blood and sweat to figure it out.

Kaguya. We’d been fighting last night. I’d beaten her to death, and she’d given back about half as good as me, didn’t she? Not that I'd ever let her hear that. One way or another, it wasn’t a surprise considering how often this happened. It had become so unremarkable over centuries that I was struggling to piece together the details of the encounter at the moment. I vaguely remembered straddling atop her, beginning to punch and not stopping until she ceased moving. After that, she’d gotten up and-

“Are we going to do this forever, Mokou?”

I remembered those words suddenly, and a sour sensation began to fill my stomach. Did she say that, really? Instead of “Next time I’ll kill you” or “Next time you won’t come back” or a dozen other meaningless statements of impossible finality between two immortals? I wasn’t really sure. But I could hear the words so clearly in my head. Weak, croaking, delirious, but absolutely her.

I shook it off and tried to focus on the here and now before I let it get to me., I really must have just staggered back and thumped right down into my bedroll, huh? Well… there was no helping it, was there? I had to clean myself, as much of a pain as it was. One of my hands instinctively reached into my pocket and unearthed the cigarettes that I'd bought last time I headed into the human village. Surprisingly they were still there, but unsurprisingly, they'd been totally crushed. must have rolled over them in my sleep. Or, well… No. They probably just got smashed when Kaguya and I were beating the shit out of each other, huh?

I sighed. It was not shaping up to be a particularly good day for me.

—

The walk to the nearby river wasn't a long one, but just about anyone other than me that had attempted it would have found a way to get lost. They did call this place the “Bamboo Forest of the Lost” for a reason, and it wasn’t just because everyone who lived in it was as much of a lost cause as I was. Enormous, labyrinthine and almost entirely without landmarks, everything just looked the same for as far as the eye could see. You could go in circles forever.

But I'd dwelt there for years and years at this point. The most minor of landmarks had become things that stood out naturally to me, and with this river being the place where I bathed (and got my water from in general further upstream) I was at the point where I could more or less figure out how to get to it by just instinctively heading in a certain direction.

An isolated, lonely place; I loved it. People were nothing but trouble, and a place that had a reputation for swallowing up trespassers and never letting them leave again was the ideal thing for keeping them the hell away from me. It was perfect. Well, almost.

You see, I wasn’t actually the only one. There was one other resident, or group of residents really, in the Bamboo Forest. Eintei, a massive manor deep in the heart of the bamboo, where
Kaguya and her entourage lived. I avoided that place like the plague when I could, though, unless I had to go give the princess a piece of my mind or something. It wasn't like they hated me or anything, either… Quite the opposite, other than Kaguya, they were weirdly friendly. She had several dozen youkai rabbit vassals and I'm pretty sure that they are just happy to play with whoever they can, given the chance. But still, that wasn't the point; it was a matter of
principle. That, and I didn't want to risk the chance of seeing her stupid face.

When I got to the river, though, I realized upon seeing my reflection that a far worse fate would be Kaguya seeing mine right now, because I'd never hear the end of it . Standing with my hands in my pockets on the bank and leaning in over the water, I found my visage a poor addition to the crystalline surface. I… Did win that fight, didn’t I? I must have, right? Because it sure didn’t look like it.

Worse than looking like I'd just crawled out of a battlefield, I was closer to a zombie that crawled out of a grave. Red and black streaks filled my long white hair (The gods sure have a sense of humor. Why did nothing age past nineteen but my hair color?), and my face was smudged with dried blood and dirt. A ragged scratch ran down across my cheek, starting just below one of my eyes; Kaguya's fingernails I suppose? That horrible princess had gone right for a gouge. The wound looked a few days old, though, as opposed to totally fresh; that was just how the Hourai Elixir’s healing worked on minor injuries. It healed them, but seemed to let you keep them long enough to feel the regret that you got them. By tomorrow, they'd probably be gone.

"Unless I run into her again." I thought quietly to myself. But that couldn't be helped; Kaguya and I were like cats and dogs. And while my predicament was a fault of my own, there was no one to blame for our distaste of one another except for her. Either way, whatever future might have come, the present was now. And it was also very, very dirty.

I left my clothes by the riverbank with the plan of washing them after I was done, wading out in the water. The chill of autumn was already blowing down from Youkai Mountain, slow to set in but beginning to make its presence known a little more loudly this morning. By the time winter came around I’d be using my fire powers to keep myself from passing out in the water. Dying of hypothermia sucked; you felt warm, then paradoxically cold, then there was nothing. And then, I guess, there was something. If you were me, anyway.

For now, though,it was tolerable. Taking a deep breath, I dunked my head beneath
the surface. Dying from drowning sucked too. It was peaceful, as far as those things go? But then you woke up (again, if you were me), clawed your way to the surface, and you coughed up water for half an hour. Absolutely the pits.

Dying. Hurting. I’d done a lot of that in various ways, only to be jump started back to the land of the living to do it all over again. Since coming to Gensokyo, though, it hadn’t been mostly death-free, barring occasional wins from Kaguya.. This place wasn’t bad, I thought as I grinded my fingertips through my hair and tried to get the filth out. Why would it be when you hardly had a care in the world? This place was like me, nothing ever changed.

Before I came to Gensokyo, I was constantly moving around. In the outside world, people like me were just about the furthest thing from normal imaginable. If I stayed in one place too long that meant that people would begin to take notice that something was off about the way I aged. Namely, not at all. That meant that people would assume I was some sort of youkai. Then the trouble would start.

The first time I ever died and was reborn, I’d been working as a day laborer for about twenty years in a small rural village. Just scraping by… Never getting older, and not really stopping to think about it. At first, it was a joke among people. When it stopped being a joke, they started making assumptions, and what they came up with was that I was a witch. They tied me to a pole in the village square and threw stones at me until I died. People are wonderful, huh?

You couldn't make friends like that, even if you keep yourself inconspicuous on a smaller scale. Sure, it worked in the short term but they eventually started to notice that they were getting old and you were getting young. Then the questions… And then the disbelief… And then the fear. It was during those days in the outside world that it was really driven home to me that I didn't need people. I learned to move on without them and survive with the bare minimum of interacting with them when I had to at all.

Gensokyo, though, was different. It was full of youkai, mysteriously powered humans, and every bizarre fringe case in between. I was almost commonplace, suddenly. Now, don’t get me wrong: the neighboring Human Village still wanted nothing to do with me. I was a strange woman who never seemed to get older living in a place where nothing but youkai dwelled.But I was just one oddity among many that they put up with. They called me “The Bamboo Forest Shade,” and left me the hell alone. Fine by me.

I wanted to be alone. Call it delusion if you want, but I was totally, absolutely certain that a life of being feared, hated, and hurt had brought me to transcend loneliness just as certain as the Hourai Elixir had brought me to transcend death. It was still and at peace, and that was all I could ever ask for. I got lost in that for a moment, scrubbing myself clean… Eyes shut and relaxing.

And then my peace came crashing down.

“Um, miss?”

My eyes immediately snapped open at the diminutive little voice that came from the direction of the riverbank where I’d left my dirty clothes in a pile to await rinsing. My fingers, still dug into my long hair, froze mid clench and I turned to face the speaker, still submerged up to my neck in the river. My first instinct was that one of Kaguya’s pet bunnies had meandered over to pester me, but the truth left me completely off guard.

Standing a short ways away from me was a small human girl with scraggly, unkempt black hair. Her bangs winged out to one side and drooped over one of her eyes like a curtain, the other a bright chestnut color that was staring at me with an inordinate amount of amazement. She had on a blue linen kimono and no shoes; not exactly an unusual look for a lower-class brat from the Human Village.

What she looked like wasn’t the surprising part though, it was that she was here at all. This was deep enough into the Bamboo Forest that no one but me or the local youkai dared wander around here. That she was currently standing in front of me, not to mention sans any sort of adult to protect her, was nothing sort of miraculous.

“Excuse me?” The girl said again, this time more cautiously, and I realized that for an uncomfortably long stretch of time I had just been a head poking out of the water, glaring at this kid, stupefied. Oops.

“Uh. Yeah?” Why the hell did I respond like that? It was like I was trying to sound casual and cool, which just made the circumstances of this run-in even more confusing and absurd. Could you blame me? Who was I supposed to practice talking to other than Kaguya? Either way,it wasn’t too effective, because every second that passed, she seemed to just be staring at me more and more frightened, until…

“A-A-Are you a kappa?!” She blurted, putting up her arms like they’d somehow shield her from my answer. I could feel the water around me heating up as anger instantly raised my body heat.

“A… What the hell are you talking about?!” I blurted, the absurdity finally reaching a fever pitch and bashing aside the awkwardness in favor of pissed-off incredulity.This kid had apparate out of nowhere in the middle of a monster-teeming forest to… Make fun of me? “A kappa? Do I look like a goddamn kappa to you?!”

“You’re in a river. Teacher told me that they’re river monsters,” she said skeptically. “Teacher’s usually right about those things.”

“Oh, now I look like a monster, huh? I-” I froze. Wait, why was I getting into a shouting match with this kid? “Listen. What the hell are you doing out here? You’re in the middle of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. Don’t you know it's dangerous? Or did that teacher of yours not tell you about that?”

Her eyes went wide, and she shifted from one foot to the other nervously like I was about to punish her. At least the brat was smart enough to know when she’d done something wrong: “She said she was going to go on ahead and make sure there was nothing scary and told me to wait. But, she was taking a long time, and I heard a noise, and…”

“Ugh. And you just wandered off? Stupid. Not that she’s much better, taking a kid to a place like this. Turn around.” She blinked, tilting her head somewhere between uncomprehending and untrusting. “Turn around so I can get out and get dressed.”

I muttered angrily as she did as she was told, trudging my way out of the river. I’d mostly cleaned myself off well enough, but my clothes were still the result of a real horror show; guess that half of things were going to wait until… What?

Until I did what? I asked myself that as I pulled on my baggy red pants, cursing as my foot slipped through a brand new hole I’d put in the knee and readjusting it. Why did I care about this, some kid earning themselves a messy death in some youkai’s stomach for wandering into a place where she shouldn’t have gone, “teacher” who was probably already dead themselves or not. If I had any sense, I told myself, I’d let nature run its course. The problem would take care of itself. I told myself that, yes. I told myself I was no longer human a lot. And what should a monster, the Bamboo Forest Shade, care about this?

I think the first bit of evidence that things were going to change for my quiet, pointless, hermit’s life was that I could easily confirm the first part of that to be true, but even then, pissed off and put out and wanting this inconvenience to end already, I couldn’t reconcile the second. I was a monster now, sure. But not that kind of monster.

“What we’re gonna do is find your teacher, then get you two the hell out of here. This forest is no place for people to be wandering around in,” I circled around to face her. When she saw me fully dressed, she paused; not quite a recoil, but an inability to not scrunch up her nose. All the bloodstains, the tears, the dried mud. I looked like a gravedigger that had the whole graveyard rise up and rebel during last night’s shift, plus all the not-entirely-healed cuts and scrapes on my face. Those would hang out until the elixir either closed them up or I took care of the rebirth myself.

“Are you okay?” She asked with the tactlessness only an annoying brat could achieve. “You look like you got beat up.”

“More okay than you’ll be if you don’t shut up and follow me, twerp.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, irrationally pissed that she wasn’t able to tell that it was me who had been doing the beating last night. “Stay close.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She chirped, my brusqueness doing absolutely nothing to her. If anything, she seemed happier than before. She’d gone from calling me a river monster (If you happen to be a kappa reading this, her words, not mine. I don’t think you’re all that monstrous. You guys don’t exactly make it easy to be friends with you though to be fair) to trusting me utterly. It made me grit my teeth; it was a wonder this kid wasn’t dead already with instincts like this. It was also a wonder to me that I couldn’t just shrug all this off, but I was past that point.

The faster I got this over with, the faster I could return to my quiet, empty life. The faster I could wash my clothes, the faster I could go to the village and swipe some cigarettes, the faster the days could turn and this nonsense could be pulled beneath the quicksand that was the passage of time and forgotten forever.

That was what I kept telling myself.

—

“What’s your name, Lady?”

Where are we? The Bamboo Forest. What’s that weird plant? It’s bamboo. Why do you wear all those ribbons? They’re seals. Why do you wear all those seals? It’s complicated. How far are we from Teacher? I don’t know, you tell me, dammit. Can I eat this? Not if you don’t want to hurl.

Question after insipid question spilled from this girl’s mouth, and somehow she didn’t gather from the blunt and uninterested answers to stop it with them. I had a headache and it had only been about ten minutes. I wondered if it was specifically because of the content of the conversation, or because this was probably the most one person had spoken to me in decades. It was like trying to remember how to swim by having someone push you into the middle of a lake.

“My name is Tomoe,” the kid offered graciously when I didn’t answer. “Tomoe Hakani.”

I sighed. Wasn’t gonna get out of this now.

“Mokou,” I groused irritatedly, not looking at her as we walked the path back in the direction of my hut. I was occupied looking around for any sign of her teacher, or what was left of her. I genuinely didn’t believe there was a possibility of her still being alive, after all. Youkai lived out here, and while in Gensokyo not all of them were dangerous, you could find some nasty things if you poked around in dark and forgotten places long enough. This was more so I didn’t have to listen to her crying all the way to the edge of the forest.

That was my thought process. To keep a kid from sobbing about abandoning this lady she kept going on and on about, I was going to go see if I could find her corpse. It wasn’t very in-depth, admittedly, but I wasn’t any good at this, you know?

"What's-?"

“All right, Tomoe. Stop asking stupid stuff for a second, it’s my turn: What are you and this teacher lady doing in the Bamboo Forest? There’s nothing here for people in the village.” That wasn’t entirely true. Junk from the outside world popped up here occasionally, but that was hardly the sort of thing a preteen and a schoolteacher would be here after.

“Teacher says a doctor lives out here, in a big house. We were going to visit them,” Tomoe answered very genuinely and easily. It wasn’t escaping me that no matter how much I bristled at her she was just kind of ignoring it and continuing to be nice. That was insanely frustrating, because it was about eighty percent of my usual tactic when meeting someone: be an asshole and scare them off.

No amount of assholery could withstand how strange that answer was to me, though.My steady pace came to an abrupt halt and I turned, an eyebrow raised: “She must be talking about Eintei. What in the hell are you going out there for? Those stuffy moon people avoid humans like the plague.”

“Moon people?” Tomoe sounded genuinely baffled. Wow; this kid didn’t know the first thing about the place she was putting her life in danger to reach, huh?

“Moon people. That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Saying the phrase twice put a bad taste in my mouth, enough to make me spit rudely into the bamboo beside us. “Either way, you’re wrong. There’s no doctor there. She’s a damned witch, if anything.”

“Witch?” Another confused question, though this one a little more nervous than the last.

“Awful woman. Always has something pithy and annoying to say about everything. Makes a bunch of weird medicine and doesn’t do anything with it except dump it in a storehouse or feed it to her rabbits to watch them change colors or explode.” I was ranting, but at the same time, ranting felt good, actually. Very wrong audience for it, sure; Tomoe was just staring at me. But holy hell, did it ever feel good to complain about how annoying Eirin was to someone other than a wall or a tree.

The walk didn’t take all that long, and beyond the endless interrogation was mostly uneventful. The stroll finally led us back past my home. Tomoe peered at it curiously; somehow I immediately felt self-conscious in a way I hadn’t expected to.

It wasn’t all that much, really. Considering I’d been the one to put the thing together, it couldn’t have been. Simple, a bamboo hut raised up on stilts to keep rain from coming in; every now and then portions of the wall needed to be replaced with new panels, and the roof needed new thatch. I took care of that as well. I’d learned how to do things like that after drinking the elixir, wandering from place to place.

Sometimes I wondered what my family would have thought about that; the daughter of a noble family, living in what was more or less a shack in the middle of the woods. Shame, probably? But they are all gone now… Long gone. There was no one left to feel that shame, no meaning for that shame to hold anymore. Like the days, the quicksand of time had taken that into itself as well.

They were gone, their thoughts and feelings with them. They may as well have never existed. Which made it funny to me, in retrospect, that I was realizing I was still capable of feeling shame instead by watching this brat gawk at my meager living accommodations: “My house not fancy enough for you, kid?”

“It’s okay,” Tomoe shrugged. Okay? Okay?! Tomoe, unconcerned, quickly followed up: “Why do you live out here anyway? Aren’t people supposed to live in the village? With other people? That’s what teacher says.”

“You can tell your teacher to stick it-”

“Tomoe!” A voice from just behind my house saved me from saying something completely out of pocket to this poor kid who honestly just didn’t know she was looking at a messed-up creature at the moment. At first, I was genuinely shocked; I turned, hands on my hips, prepared to redirect my anger at this woman who I thought had been dead about five seconds ago instead of the kid.

“Teeeeacher!” Tomoe called back excitedly, overriding any nonsense I was about to start railing in their direction regardless.What came hurriedly jogging out to meet us was a young woman. Early, mid twenties? She looked a little older than me, physically anyway. The white frills on the skirt of her dress flittered as she came charging for us, long hair doing the same behind her in a streak before she came to a halt by Tomoe. She was immediately kneeling down and wrapping her arms around the girl. Despite the cold she was visibly sweating; I realized in passing that she was probably running around the forest looking for Tomoe.

“Thank all the gods, I thought… I thought… Ugh. Never run off like that!” The urgency, not to mention the sappy reunion, made me feel a little bad for the scolding I had lined up for her. She looked up to me: Her hair kind of reminded me of mine; more of a silvery, though it also sported icy cerulean all streaks through it that shimmered in the sun. Her face, though, was… It was hard to describe? Friendly? Innately so. Small, a little bit round, but looking at it, I couldn’t imagine a mean expression even if she were to try.

It could accommodate worry, though, as I realized she had begun to look down at my clothing. The blood streaks. The dirt. A frown, mixed with that twist of alarm and discomfort. I knew it, oh, how I knew it so well. Why were you so stupid as to think it wasn’t coming? They always look at you like this eventually. She’s just getting a shortcut, you stupid-

“You found Tomoe?” She asked. The expression I’d gained in response to her own was surely not helping; I could feel my brow furrowed as I once again shoved my hands into my pockets in the same manner I’d like to have crawled into a hole and died. Fat lot of good trying that would have done me.

“Yeah, I did.” I had hardened myself again. “And you were lucky I did, or she would have ended up as something or another’s table scraps with how freely she was walking around the forest. You almost got her killed.”

“You…” I went silent as, rather than bite back at me she raised to her feet, put her hands at her sides,and promptly gave me a deep bow of her head. “You’re correct. Forgive me. I’m very, very sorry for the trouble I caused you. It was my responsibility, and again I seem to have failed.”

What was wrong with these people?! You were supposed to get angry! Go away! Not grovel!

“Look, just, c’mon. Shit happens” I growled, glancing off to the side. The longer my face lingered on the act, the more difficult it was to justify being pissed off. She wasn’t even actively asking why I looked like trash anymore. Why was talking to people so incredibly difficult? This had to end. Now. “What matters is you found her, now both of you *get out of here.*I’ll lead you you to the entrance of the-”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. We need to reach the mansion deeper in the forest.” She shook her head. She didn’t sound defiant so much as insistent as she stood up straight to speak to me once more. “There’s a doctor there. I hate to impose further, but is there any way you can lead us there, if you know where it is? I’m not entirely sure how much time we have…”

“No,” I waved a hand irritably. “No, you really don’t. There’s doctors in the damned village, the moon people are just going to look at you like bugs and tell you to go home.”

What did I care? Why was I even telling them this? Helping people wasn’t my thing. I should have just rolled my eyes and let them try. And yet, my mouth was moving on its own, getting me involved far past a point I honestly should have never reached in the first place. “You lucked out once. That kinda thing doesn’t happen twice.”

“I… Miss… Forgive me. My name is Keine Kamishirasawa. What’s your name?” I loaded another denial, ready to fire back again, but this time her eyes shifted over to Tomoe. The girl had, quite unbidden, wandered over to the entrance of my home and was sitting on the raised doorway, legs swaying beneath her and looking cheerfully up at the sky. It was a look that lasted only a second or so maybe, but it had a heavy kind of meaning to it that immediately began to make me feel… Nervous?

“Please. Only a moment of your time, and if you say no, we’ll leave.” She pleaded again. Her voice was even. Patient. Was this what a teacher sounded like? It had been long enough, I couldn’t remember, but I felt stupid for how angry I was as I stood and listened to her calmly talk to me, covered in dried filth.

“Mokou,” I mumbled. No. Use the full thing, my brain said to me. For the first time in I don’t precisely remember how long I included the surname: “Fujiwara no Mokou.”

“Mokou,” my name felt wrong coming out of someone other than Kaguya’s mouth, not being said dripping with disdain. “I don’t think here is a good place to talk about this, but I need to at least try. It’s our only chance to save a life.”

“Save a…” I stopped talking, as the puzzle pieces finally fell into place about why a human woman would be dragging a human child into a place from which people rarely returned.

I could have ignored her even then. I could have ignored her and bullied them into leaving, I’m sure, given enough time. I could have left them to their own devices, even, when you got down to it. And why shouldn’t I? Nothing good came from strangers, interaction, or civilization. Of getting attached to things that will surely hurt, one way or another, in the end. I could have shut it down. Escaped back to the empty life, with no diversions or difficulties but the ones I made for myself.

But for the second time, my body seemed to decide my needs for me and my words came out from my mouth in an out-of-body sort of way: like I was starving for a new sort of pain it could feed on. Hunger always, inevitably, lost to appetite. And so, I began the feast: “Straight there. Straight back. Get the kid and follow me.”

I turned my back on her and waited for her to follow instructions. I did that because I couldn’t bear the relief on her face that I knew would come when we reached Eintei and she was told to beat it. “Thank you, Mokou,” she said nevertheless.

Mokou.

“Are we going to do this forever, Mokou?” Kaguya asked last night after I finished beating her. Sitting in a mess of tattered pink kimono, staring up at the full moon above her. Her voice had been unusually sad.

“I suppose so,” I had said last night. I remembered now, saying it. I remembered stopping and staring at that same moon, beside her. Wet with blood and sweat. No gloating traded between us. No petty barbs, no swears, no declarations. No, I remember just saying that as we stayed there for a time.

And I think I remembered feeling sad, too.

Notes:

More than ten years ago, I attempted to write this story on Fanfiction.net, and my love for writing just kind of died. I've always been a little sad because I was partial to the story I was going to tell with it. I've kind of rediscovered love for writing over the last few years and this was the result of revisiting it. I feel like I've come a long way, particularly with pacing. The first chapter of this fic almost immediately jumped to Mokou being invested in Keine and Tomoe's problems and that was just... wrong lol.

If it isn't clear, this takes place before any of the touhou games (though not massively long before any of them). Characters are going to be a bit different than their game versions for a time. I've also taken some creative liberties with the Hourai Elixir and how fast or slow it heals things.

Chapter 2: House of the Moon

As strange and unusual as problems are, I think even you can sympathize with getting yourself into a situation and almost immediately wanting a way out of it. Everyone has that, right? The realization that you’ve made a mistake and the fantastical desire to turn the clock hands backwards and undo it.

You can’t. Even in a world full of monsters and ghosts and everything in between, the concept of the second chance is a fairy tale, because the fact is that lives are mostly built up of the mistakes you’ve made. Trying to defy that is a waste of time, which is why it exists mostly as a shameful wish meant for your more desperate moments. What you realize instead, somewhere along the way, is that what you should be wishing for is an exit.

Turning back the clock is impossible. Running away? It's as simple as surrender. More often than not, the only hurdle you've got to clear is your own shame.

“Mokou, how long have you lived out here?”

As Keine asked this, I had begun to move past the "I wish I never agreed to this" and into the "I'm going to ditch all of this at the first given opportunity" stage. I should never have agreed to guide these two in the first place; it was a moment of weakness. If anything, I could use it as a learning experience to remind myself that I could still have those.

“Long time,” I muttered, staring down at a bent cigarette in my hand that I’d pulled from my pocket, trying to stare it back into shape somehow. We had been walking for about twenty minutes now; there’d be just a little further to go at that point.

“Weird place to live… The village isn’t far away!” Tomoe piped up, and I gave her an irritated little glance over my shoulder. She just smiled. The kid always seemed to, and it was increasingly making me feel like I’d lost my touch at spooking people.

“Tomoe, be polite.” Keine said tersely, though in the end she couldn’t resist noting the obvious conclusion. “That is true, though. There are many stories about dangerous things creeping around the Bamboo Forest. Why would you choose to live here?”

Lady, questions like that are one of the big reasons I choose to live here, because answering them has always historically been a goddamn disaster. This called for future-proofing. I needed to scare the hell out of these two.

“Ever heard of the Shade of Bamboo Forest?” I asked with a barely-concealed smirk.

“They say it’s a youkai who stalks the… Wait.” Keine blinked twice, looking at me, “That’s you…?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged my shoulders. No, the smirk was entirely concealed now as I strolled with my hands in my pockets. That’d get this mess cleared up. Make them realize they’d no reason to want to be around me any more than they had to. Make them-

“The village people leave offerings outside of the forest for that creature all the time. Is that how you stay fed?” Her voice was suddenly wrapped in a deep sympathy, aimed directly at me. I winced. What the hell?! Why was she sounding so concerned?

"I… Well, I mean, the sacks of rice are nice," I said honestly. Not that I needed to eat, but… Wait, no! I was a monster! A LEGENDARY one at that! One of the multitude of reasons nobody went into this goddamn forest! A monster in reputation anyway, at the moment, I sounded terribly sheepish and stupid. My face turned red, and my attempt to look even the slightest bit cool or aloof was undone.

Honestly, it was all just hollow bullshit anyway. If I wanted to scare these two off, I could have just made everything around me go up in smoke. But I didn't. And moreover, it was clear in my mind that I didn't want to.

Why? Why was that?

“Jin told me that the Bamboo Forest Shade eats kids when people don’t leave offerings…” Tomoe said, squinting at me. She didn’t sound scared either, so much as now mentally reappraising the use of the other kid’s stories. Thanks for at least trying to add to the story that was supposed to keep people like these away, “Jin”. I’d probably hate the hell out of you, too, but it was something.

“You two have no damned common sense. You wander into dangerous places where monsters live, you get told you’re talking to a monster, and all you can do is try and figure out my diet." I hunched my shoulders, feeling stupid and humiliated.

“I would figure that a ‘legendary youkai’ would have tried to eat us by now, is all.” Keine said with a good-humored chuckle. And another thing, neither of them seemed to have any idea how to recognize the person they were talking to was pissed off.

The forest trudge was chattery as all hell, but otherwise, not particularly eventful otherwise. Eventually, the forest finally began to shift though. Uniform trails through identical trees began to take on a more carefully trimmed and kept section, and the dirt was replaced by stone footpath. It was only a matter of time before the top of Eintei began to be visible above the greenery.

The place was gorgeous, as much as I would have wanted to just write it off as a spooky dump (and as much as I would have, if you asked me). Huge wooden walls of a style antiquated even by Gensokyo standards surrounded a manor, which made me feel even more self-conscious about my home than Keine and Tomoe had earlier. It made loathing it a little bit easier, and as we stopped a short distance from it, I came to a stop and glared at it as though it were Kaguya herself.

“Is this the doctor’s house, teacher?” Tomoe was looking at it with awe; there was a good chance it was probably the biggest building she’d ever seen in her life. She was peering right into the gates, which I don’t believe I’d ever seen closed. Why bother? Who was going to come? Either way, what was quickly occupying her attention were the multitude of figures visibly mulling around the grounds: “Who are they?”

“Rabbit youkai. Duh?” A gaggle of girls in simple dresses, they all had Big floppy white ears that sprouted from the tops of their heads. What the hell else could they be? When I said the word ‘youkai,’ the little girl gasped. “Oh, relax. Who ever heard of a rabbit hurting you? They’re more likely to annoy you to death.”

She made a little pouting face at being scolded, the first time I'd actually managed to get a rise out of her. It felt kinda good. Keine, meanwhile, had taken on a firm and resolute expression, staring up at that building. As blasé as I'd been about the rabbits, usually that did get some awe out of people. How much did this lady know about youkai, anyway? Whatever. Not my business.

“Anyway, that’s that. What are you waiting for? Go talk to them. But again, fair warning… That witch doesn’t give a damn about you or anyone else but herself. “

I was expecting her reaction to be meek at that. Maybe even angry at my continued dismissal of her and this little quest of hers? I don't know exactly. All I wanted her to do was go away. All of this had been a nonsensical mistake, me getting saddled with something pointless in a moment of weakness, and I wanted it to stop.

But this woman, a plain old schoolteacher, continued to handle my barking with more grace than I could remember ever seeing before. I was staring daggers at her as she turned to face me- didn’t she notice? She surely had to. But the way she smiled at me, I might as well have been grinning while handing her a bouquet of wildflowers. With no hesitation she bowed, silky blue-silver hair momentarily covering her face before she straightened her back once more to face me.

"Miss Fujiwara, I genuinely can't thank you enough for leading us here. If you hadn't been with us, if you hadn't found Tomoe, I… I don't know what we would have done. From the bottom of my heart, you have my gratitude. If there's anything I could do to repay you…"

No. No, no, no! What the hell WAS this lady?! She was supposed to be angry! She was supposed to be hurt! Could she really, genuinely not do anything right?!

Or, no. Maybe it was me. Because I realized I was blushing like a dipshit. I caught myself and looked away as quickly as I could, beginning to feel myself slip all over just as I had when I first met her. I wanted to punch a goddamn wall; what was wrong with me today? I was being so weak, between all of this and me thinking about Kaguya earlier.

“Are we going to do this forever, Mokou?”

"Listen, I-"

"Oh, I wouldn't go thanking her just yet~" A crooning little voice suddenly interrupted this whole scene. It was one I'd normally be pretty irritated to hear if just about any other circumstance, but this was at least giving a chance for me to focus on something else and get my bearings back.

The rabbit had crept up behind us with remarkable ease; a small girl with black hair in a simple, lacy pink dress. A necklace with a carrot-shaped amulet (okay, lady, we get it, you're a rabbit) swung on her neck as she swayed back and forth cheerfully, and two white furred lop-ears bounced atop her head. This, just through virtue of being sufficiently bothered enough by her to remember, I knew was Tewi. Tewi…. Nope, couldn't remember the last name. Kaguya had too many damn pets.

"Planning to stroll in and make some noise?" Tewi stood with her hands on her hips in front of the path to Eintei like she was an indomitable one-youkai wall. As she held that pose, she looked me up and down, taking in every rusty red smudge and smear on my clothes with obvious and barely-restrained mockery. Then, her face was consumed by a remarkably frustrating grin. Goddamn toothy long-eared… Ugh. "As funny as that sounds, I think you're better off looking for a washbucket , Miss Forest Hermit."

“Why don’t you shut your face and go pound some mochi?” I growled, “Actually, no. I’ll help. We can use your mouth as the mortar, and I’ll take the mallet and-”

“Ooh, scary.” She stuck her tongue out childishly, entirely unafraid. “Sorry. It’s usually fun to have you chase me around and fail for a little bit, but you’re gonna have to beat it this time. And not just because you’re smelly, either! Miss Eirin says no fighting is allowed today.”

"Not here to fight," I sighed and put my hands up to either side in pre-emptive surrender. It didn't escape my notice that all of this talk about fighting and commotions was making Keine give me a weird look. Good. Maybe it'd help her learn her lesson. "These people just wanna see the witch, so I guided them here."

“If I may,” Keine interjected, “We’ve come from the Human Village. We’ve been told you have medicine far beyond what we have. Would it be at all possible for us to meet with the doctor? Even just a moment of her time would do.”

“You… Really brought these people here with you?” Tewi raised an eyebrow, seemingly altogether ignoring Keine. As I knew she would, Tewi almost entirely tuned out of Keine’s short explanation halfway through, waving her hands unconcerned. I told them. Tewi was pretty harmless to humans, but the only reason this hadn't ended with her pranking them hell out of them and telling them to get lost was because she wanted to torment me more. "Are you feeling okay? Did Kaguya-dono scramble your brain or something?"

“Would you stop bugging me and just hear her out?” I spat, glaring at her.

“Miss, please-”

"All that medicine stuff sounds like a yoooooouuuu problem. I'm under strict orders not to let anybody in right now. Mistress Yagokoro is working hard on something new and strong." Tewi rolled her eyes as Keine pulled her attention again. Of course she was going to say no; and even if I could use her smug face like a temari ball, I wasn't going to. I'd give them both fair warning. I'd just let them get turned down, guide them out, and move on with my-

“Wow..A youkai kid…!” Tomoe said with sparkling eyes. It seemed the second she had been told she was in no danger, she was in fascination mode.“Your dress is so pretty!”

The mood shifted entirely, as Tewi turned to Tomoe and… Clapped her hands together, smiling dramatically more genuinely than she’d done at me, cheerful giggle and all. “Oh! Well, thank you. I mean, it’s nothing special but I try to keep it clean.”

Tomoe wandered over to Tomoe and began to admire her in a circle, looking over her ears and the puffy white cotton tail on the back: “Wow… These are real, too?”

“Of course. I am a rabbit after all,” Tewi responded proudly, hand to her chest. “It isn’t often we get humans with a discerning eye in these forests. Is the medicine you’re after for you?”

I watched all of this with narrowed eyes, and the lop-eared little weirdo shot me a look, almost daring me to call her out. Tomoe had it wrong; this wasn't a kid. That was a certified granny she was talking to! Tewi was old. How old exactly, I didn't know, but ancient even by youkai standards. It was tempting to fill the kid in, but she was doing a surprisingly good (if inadvertent) job of buttering up Kaguya's little gatekeeper, so I didn't interrupt. Keine, too, seemed to take notice and made her move. The lady was clever, I had to give her that. Persistent too.

"It is. Is there any way at all we could at least attempt to seek an audience and have someone hear us out? I promise we won't cause trouble, and we'll leave right away if the answer is 'no'." Keine's gentle pleading tone was tugging at me all over again, and it wasn't even directed at me this time. Tewi frowned at this, and the whole kiddie act dropped for a second. Ancient little weirdo or not, she wasn't evil or heartless. At least I don't think so.

Keine's little spiel really made me think again, about something I didn't want to: she had alluded to this earlier in order to get me to come along with this… But what was wrong with the kid in the first place? Since the moment I met her, she seemed full of energy; what the hell could have been going on that necessitated begging this mansion full of shut-ins for help?

Despite my continued attempts to detach and decouple, I felt something sour deep in my stomach as I watched her smile. The only thing that snapped me back to reality was realizing Tewi was regarding me skeptically: "Promise you won't cause any trouble, Miss Forest Hermit?"

“What? I’m just the guide. Last thing in the goddamn world I wanna do is go in there.” I scowled. The wily old rabbit clicked her tongue, though.

"Nope. You're going to lead her to Eirin since you know the way. I'm busy guarding and the other rabbits don't have the time." I glanced at the "other rabbits", who mostly seemed to be meandering and playing games out on the lawn of the manor. By the time I looked back at Tewi, she was smirking that too-broad smirk all over again. She was doing this just to annoy me, wasn't she? " They're busy. And besides, I need you to go in so I can say you beat me up to get in. Alibis are important! So what’ll it be, Miss Forest Hermit? Gonna let all this nonsense be for nothing?”

“For the love of… Fine! Let’s just get this over with.” I sighed, holding the bridge of my nose. Dragged in further, deeper. An endless chain of string-alongs was what this was, and I had a feeling it was going to make me go crazy by the end of it. It- wait.

Keine and Tomoe had done as I asked, beginning to move toward the Eintei manor grounds. I reached out and grabbed their collars, giving them both a halting tug. Without waiting for them to even finish the confused questions they were now brewing up, I walked a few steps ahead, staring intently at the ground; yep. Four wooden pegs sticking out of it, just barely visible. I gave it a firm kick- the tarp which they were holding, covered by grass and soil, snapped back and revealed a several-feet-deep pitfall in the ground that had been directly in our path.

Keine and Tomoe both turned around to look at Tewi with confusion. I joined them with an expression a little closer to staring at a cockroach. The rabbit youkai was snickering behind her hands snidely: "Weird. Wonder how that got there. Oh well, better watch your step on the way in, I guess! Oh, and if you see Reisen in there, could you tell her I want to talk to her out here? And if you could, by chance, forget to give her that warning…?”

—

“N-No! Absolutely not! Are you kidding me? How did you even get in here?!”

Yeah, this was about what I expected. Walking through Eintei has been pretty simple and quiet. Lots of panicking bunnies prancing past, not wanting to be around me any longer than absolutely possible, just in case something burst into flames (as it typically did).

The second I got to the exit to the little footbridge, where I knew the old witch did her experiments? Instantly confronted by a rabbit in weird clothes waving a finger in my face like it was a weapon. I didn't know this one's name, but I'm pretty sure she was one of the Lunarians. Her ears were different.

“Ma'am, if we please-” Keine said with a bit of nervousness in her voice.

“Don't 'ma'am' the bunnies. They're like pets.” I turned back to the red-eyed rabbit and clenched a fist. Today has been bad enough that I was really in the mood for a fight, and I was just barely choking it down: “Listen, rabbit. I just said I don’t even want to go in. The only reason I’m here is because of your obnoxious little friend here. Just let ‘em go talk to the witch-“

“Master isn’t a witch, she’s a heavily respected doctor! The Brain of the Moon!” What a good little pet, and what a great big load of horse shit she was talking. Brain of the Moon? The hell did that mean? It just made you think of a floating brain with tentacles driving a flying saucer.

“Doctors see sick patients. And you’ve got one here.” I groused, motioning to Tomoe, who was watching the rabbit girl’s ears twitch vigorously with every bit of nervous fretting she was doing.

“…You’re… Really not here to start trouble for once?” She looked to Keine, “You two either? Even though you came with her?”

“Mokou has been nothing but a polite guide for us,” Keine lied, bowing graciously.

"Teacher told me to be a good girl," Tomoe said proudly. The teacher had also told her to stay out earlier, and she'd gone kappa hunting, so who knew exactly how much that meant.

“Just get the witch to hear them out and I’m gone. No fighting today.” I grumbled sourly. This was finally what seemed to push the reluctant rabbit over the edge.

“Look, just… Ugh. Stay here. I’ll talk to her. But if she says no, then no means no!” The moon rabbit turned and headed through the crane-decorated double doors she’d been standing in front of, closing them behind her with a thud. I let out a sigh.

“They really don’t like you here, Mokou.” Tomoe observed with a little giggle. Damn, when had she gotten so sharp?

“Tomoe, don’t be rude!” Keine scolded.

“Doesn’t matter. Ain’t like she’s wrong.” I took a seat on a floor pillow that was in front of an extravagant looking door with a crescent moon cut out of it (dumbass Lunarians must have been feeling extra homesick), pulling my cigarettes from my pocket and staring at them angrily before tossing them. Damn, I could use a smoke. The Hourai Elixir didn’t get rid of cravings.

“Why is that, though?” Keine asked while Tomoe busied herself examining some murals on the wall. The things were all over Eintei. Even as someone who had grown up a nobleman’s daughter, this place was overly extravagant.

“If it hadn’t gotten through to you at this point? I’m kind of an asshole.” I muttered. Get with the program already, lady. Just… Ugh, stop smiling! No

“Being grumpy is one thing. Picking fights with a bunch of youkai regularly is different. There’s no record of you, Miss Fujiwara. Who exactly are you…?”

”Im still pretty sure she’s a kappa,” Tomoe said with extreme suspicion.

“I’m not a-“

“Don’t believe her.” The voice came from behind me. How had I not noticed someone peeking in through that stupid ass moon-hole in the wall? How did I not hear her coming? How did I not smell her? Involuntarily, my fists clenched, and I whirled around in the same instant that the door we were in front of slid open.

The polar opposite of me. Long black flowing hair, perfectly tended to. Pristine, stainless, billowy-sleeved kimono. But most importantly, no injuries. Not a single goddamn scratch. Either Eirin must have worked some magic to touch her up a little quicker, or she had some crazy makeup artist. The nicks and scratches on my face weren't entirely faded yet.

Kaguya.

“I assure you, she’s absolutely a kappa. Something dredged up from a riverbed. Nothing but trouble.”

“You-!” I began, but was ignored. The master of Eintei strode out of the room she had apparently been listening to this entire conversation in, right past me as easily as if I didn't exist. Right off the bat, I wanted nothing more in the world right then but a fight. She had that effect on me, and barely even had to try at it, even after all this time.

I was clenching my fists so hard my nails were digging into my palms, but I knew I couldn’t really do a damn thing at the moment as she crouched down to Tomoe’s level to speak. “I have to admit, however, that it’s very unusual to see Mokou in the company of anyone. What’s your name, little girl?”

"Um… Tomoe." The girl seemed well and truly taken aback. Way more so than she had been over meeting honest-to-goodness youkai, even. She was just looking at this insufferable living hina doll up and down, and even her scatterbrain was able to piece together that she was probably someone important. Bad move, kid. This was the most dangerous monster you'd met all day.

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Tomoe. We don’t get visitors to Eintei very often. My name is Kaguya Houraisan.” She chuckled melodically, “I am-”

The name triggered something not in Tomoe but Keine, the teacher immediately giving her a bow. A dramatically deeper one than she’d given me or Tewi, full on down on her knees. This caught me off guard. Actually, it managed to catch Kaguya off guard too, her eyes going wide: “Oh my. No need for that. Though, I must say I am very curious how you already knew who I am.”

“Forgive me, Princess.” Keine said politely. “I hadn’t expected to meet you today, only the doctor.” It hadn’t escaped me that she hadn’t actually addressed Kaguya’s questioning there. Weird.

"Princess?" Tomoe gasped; if she'd been fascinated by youkai rabbits, she'd had her mind blown over the fact that she was meeting one of those, her jaw-dropping. Kaguya tittered again, clearly quite satisfied with the attention.

“Don’t get too excited, kid. Princesses really aren’t all they’re made up to be.” I snapped. Something about Keine prostrating herself like that to this awful woman drove me completely crazy, and Tomoe only added to it. Maybe it was the fact that, princess or not, I don’t think I’d ever seen someone kneeling and groveling to Kaguya around here. No, honestly, I hadn’t ever seen that since….

I grit my teeth involuntarily. No. If I think about that, I will start a fight with her. No matter who's around to get caught in the crossfire. Nevertheless, her attention was now on me. It and those sharp eyes, altogether different from the ones she was regarding the other two. Cold, hateful. This was the truth of "Princess Kaguya. The real face that I knew well. I wanted to punch its lights out.

“What brings you two to Eintei? And in such strange company?” She was talking to Keine, though she wasn’t doing anything but trying to stare a hole through me. I gave back just as good as I got.

“Well, um.” The change in atmosphere wasn’t lost on Keine, whose voice was a careful trek over thin ice, “We’ve come to Eintei seeking medicine. While we were in the forest, we got separated. Mokou found Tomoe and kept her safe until I found them, and then she agreed to guide us here to speak to the doctor.”

“Really? And you offered her what, exactly?” Kaguya sounded more dubious with every word.

“Not a damn thing. And I want it all to be over already. Why do you even care? If I was here to mess with you, I would have done it already.” I growled, closer and closer to the precipice of losing it.

“So you’re saying you’re helping these two out of… the kindness of your heart?” I didn’t answer because… Well, what was I supposed to say there? My heart didn’t feel too kind, but I didn’t have anything I could offer to deny it, either. Nor could Keine, who nodded her head. The princess looked between her and I, those blatantly inhuman eyes, pitch black and heartless, darting carefully once, then twice, then…

“How wonderful!” A complete 180 in disposition. Kaguya clapped her hands together, the billowy sleeves of her kimono covering them and making no more than a clothy flap. “I never thought I’d see the day, Mokou.”

“I… What? What the hell are you so happy about?!” She was smiling like she had been when she was speaking to Tomoe earlier.

"Because it makes me feel like you actually gave thought to what we spoke about last night. And so fast, too. That must be why you look like you've been sleeping in a garbage bin. No time to wash your clothes!" Giggling behind one of those big sleeves, delighted. I'd have been even angrier at the snipe if I weren't so flummoxed. Was this some kind of game? And if not, what the hell else had we talked about that I was forgetting? "Mokou making friends… By Lord Tsukuyomi's very name, I never thought it would have been possible. This is giving me an idea.”

I was about to bitterly protest that I hadn’t made friends whatsoever. That I’d just been dragged along out of a misguided sense of obligation, that I wanted to go home, and her acting weird just made me wanna slug her in her stupid face all the more right now. What the hell did Kaguya care one way or the other about this?! I didn’t get the chance, as the door Eirin’s rabbit pet had vanished into earlier suddenly slid open once more, the rabbit behind it wearing a very unpleasant expression on her face.

“Master Eirin said that she’s far too busy to deal with anyone at the moment, and for you to… Huh?” She paused and then gawped past my shoulder at Kaguya, suddenly getting very nervous, “A-Ah! Um, Princess! I’m sorry if these noisy people awoke you, they’re just about to-”

“It’s all right, Reisen. I can hardly abide by sleeping the day away. Now, if you’d be a dear and show our honored guests to Eirin’s study?” Kaguya waved a hand, smiling placidly. Keine, who looked like she had been about to embark on another one of her pleading speeches the moment the rabbit opened her mouth.

“But… But Master Eirin said… I… She’ll…” The rabbit stammered, but quickly realized none of the noise she was making seemed to be piercing the wall of happiness that Kaguya was currently projecting. Exasperated and clearly increasingly dreading the trajectory of her day (I could sympathize, almost), she pointed a finger at me and pleaded: “E-Even her?”

“Of course. I’ll be needing her,” she said this enigmatic nonsense as though it were a proclamation that the sky was the home of the stars. I grit my teeth as Reisen finally bowed her head helplessly and motioned for everyone to follow her.

“What the hell are you getting at, Kaguya?” I hissed as we began to walk.

“If things are how I believe them to be, you’ll see soon enough,” was all she gave me before turning to Tomoe and beginning to chatter about “what a princess does,” the little girl listening eagerly.

If I hadn’t been so baffled at how I kept getting dragged deeper into this whole mess, I think I would have noted how relieved I felt that it wasn’t ending where I had expected it to. I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing the looks on Keine and Tomoe’s faces at being told to go home, no matter how hard I’d been projecting. As much as I hated to admit it, this whole train of insanity that my day had become had illustrated to me that my heart still wasn’t quite made of stone. I wanted to turn everything back before the time I realized that, but it was just futile wishcasting. Prayers said to nothing and no one in particular.

As we headed across that footbridge towards our destination, my final chances at not being involved fled me. The fact was that the moment I realized something was wrong with Tomoe, I was bound to rediscover that terrible thing called "sympathy." And life was destined only to spin further out of control from there. And the worst part of all of it? Now Kaguya had a hand in all of that to boot.

Notes:

In case it weren't obvious by the time of this chapter, I went ahead and added the slow burn tag to this fic. I think the greatest failing of my original attempt was speedrunning the story. This chapter needed basically an entire rewrite; in the original fic, they go almost straight to Eirin. Tewi isn't there, and Kaguya didn't even get a bit of speech! Now, everything gets to slow down and breathe.

This is a story about Mokou learning to interact with people again, and it was very silly to have her not interact with people on the way in. The Eintei crew is very important to this story, and this time around, we've met almost all of them. We'll finish that up next chapter.

Chapter 3: Good Things

Eirin Yagoroko spent most of her time in her little doctor’s office, or laboratory, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. It was in a small side building split off from the main house of Eintei. Sterile, boring, almost blindingly white. It kind of surprised me she went for a color scheme exactly opposite to her heart.

I didn't like her. At all. And she didn't like me either, fine by me, which meant it was little surprise that the second I walked through her door behind her nervous pet bunny, her expression instantly turned from mild shock to complete irritation. She herself was a tall woman, more so than anyone else in the room, which meant that I had to look up past her star-decorated dress (seriously, do the Lunarians ever stop it with the stupid space motifs?) to get a look at her eyeing me like a cockroach.

"Of all the ways this day could become more trying, I genuinely wasn't expecting Mokou to stumble into my office looking like she hasn't showered in a month. " Her voice was as terse as her stupid face. If one more person brought up the state of my clothes, I was going to snap. “What do you want?”

“Not a damn thing. Unless you’ve got some smokes,” I shrugged. Asking for cigarettes at inappropriate times? Indelibly cool.

Eirin rolled her eyes immediately, though. She was somehow disappointed in something I knew very well she had no expectations of in the first place: "Those will kill you, you know."

“You’re not funny. Get new material." I glowered, and my teeth began to grind at the sound of amused tittering just behind me. Eirin, for the first time, seemed to notice Kaguya standing aside the others behind me.

"I, for one, appreciate the classics," she said. Tomoe and Keine, looking completely lost, just kind of watched her snicker behind her sleeve like the cliche that she was. For something to be a classic, it had to have been good at some point.

Honestly, none of the three of us qualified there when you thought about it.

“Princess? What exactly is the meaning of this? Who are these people? And why are you with her?” She didn’t even spare me another glance as she asked the question.

“Eirin… Honestly, how rude! Eintei has guests, and you’re just ignoring them.” If you asked me, it was also really rude that she was treating me like garbage, but I didn’t expect Kaguya to make a case for me there. Kaguya, who over the course of a stroll to this office had suddenly taken up the case of acting like these two random humans were her best friends, waved a hand at the others: “This is Miss Keine Kamishirasawa, and this sweet little button is Tomoe.”

"Um. Hello, Miss Yagokoro." Keine, who up to this point had been more or less unfaltering at her chance to reach this meeting at this place no matter how futile a prospect it had been, had finally begun looking nervous. It probably had something to do with the wretched, artificial smile that Eirin had put on when she realized that Kaguya expected her to be nice to these people or to even acknowledge them at all.

Even Tomoe, terminally unable to read the atmosphere, had gotten quiet at this point. And that… I don’t know. Maybe it was just residual dislike of the woman, or maybe I’d honestly started to get entertained by the kid’s motormouth charm, but it didn’t sit well with me.

“We’ve come seeking a doctor-” Keine began.

"There are doctors in the Human Village, Miss Kamishirasawa. Are you aware of this?" She had exactly zero compassion, regardless of the plastic happiness she was currently wearing to disguise it. The witch didn't even wait to hear the problem, and that impulsively let anger get the better of me.

“Hey! Don’t be a smartass! ” I began, fully prepared to make the whole situation a lot more disastrous whether it benefitted anything or not. Just kinda, y’know, my thing. In the end, it was Kaguya who just talked over me with annoying smoothness before I could continue.

“Eirin. They’ve come all this way seeking your help,” Kaguya said with a gentle smile.

“Princess, I-”

“They’ve come with Mokou.” She was still being friendly, but I could just barely catch a glimpse of the black heartlessness beneath it as she said my name. Her eyes got a little darker. A little harsher. A little more real. “Mokou is helping them. It would be a shame to let that effort go to waste, yes?”

"...Yes." She hesitated for a few heartbeats before saying that. Didn't really need to say what she was thinking out loud when I saw her confused face break the fake congeniality. Something not too far from what I was thinking, too: What the hell are you up to?

No answer was forthcoming. At last, a labored sigh escaped Eirin’s mouth. Shockingly, in the end, Keine had won.

“Very well. Take a seat, all of you. Let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

—

"Breathing and heartbeat are normal for a human. Very slight fever." Eirin's voice was cold and clinical as she scrawled notes down on a paper casually. But I could see the fire in her eyes that was burning the moment she had removed the bandages beneath Tomoe's kimono: intrigue.

I didn’t blame her, for once. I was feeling not far off from that, I think. This was the longest I had ever been in a room with Kaguya without attempting to kill her; I only realized that in retrospect. At the moment, once Eirin had taken Tomoe aside and laid her down on her stomach to pull away the top of her outfit, the only thing I could focus on was… Well. It was somehow both shocking and obvious.

“Why are you checking that stuff? If I can see the problem, so can you.” I wanted to sound more annoying than I did, sitting on that uncomfortable little chair sandwiched between Kaguya and Keine, but I could only really hear the quiet distress in my voice.

There were two markings on Tomoe’s back, about a foot apart and each a little smaller than a fist. Bloodless wounds; they almost looked like they were several days old at this point, and strangely not too deep for how large they were. The skin flanking the punctures was an angry purple color. It looked like it hurt a lot.

But it couldn’t have been, right? That was where my mind was failing to connect the sight of the girl’s wounds with the girl herself. Tomoe had been nothing but a little ball of energy all day. How could someone dealing with something like that find the energy to pester the hell out of me with inane questions for hours straight? To get excited at the sight of annoying rabbit youkai? To go all sparkly-eyed at the prospect of a princess?

Even now, as Eirin began to prod at the wounds very carefully with a long metal instrument of some kind, she didn't seem to react. She was more cooperative than she'd been all day, in fact, finally reaching the reason they'd taken this stupid venture into the forest in the first place. She was humming some little song I'd never heard before as Eirin worked.

“If you would, Miss Kamishirasawa, how did this happen?” Eirin asked.

Keine, ever since the wounds had been bared, had become a lot more tight-faced. I knew the look; being confronted with a problem you knew was there but still didn’t want to be reminded about so concretely as this. As she spoke, though, she finally began to avert her eyes.

“Classes ended late last night. I walked the children home as I always do, but Tomoe… Strayed from the group.” The deep shame in her words was palpable. I shut an eye as I realized how much worse scolding her for letting Tomoe wander off must have made her feel, even if she didn’t let it show. In fact, until reaching here, she’d seemed almost impervious to the prospect of anything except a positive outcome. I’d been both frustrated and admiring of it, in a way. “By the time I found her, she’d wandered to the village outskirts, and was unconscious with those wounds.”

Eirin filed this sad, simple, and short story away in her mind before turning back to Tomoe: “Little one, do you remember what gave you these?”

“Nuh-uh.” Tomoe was the only one who hadn’t gained any sort of gravity to her voice. To her, this strange day was nothing more than routine somehow. “I just remember something… Loud? Loud and big. And then when I woke up, I was with Teacher.”

"Spider," I muttered as something finally came to me after staring at those strange wounds for long enough. Everyone in the room turned to look at me simultaneously, and my cheeks instantly flushed. I thought it'd been deep enough under my breath to not be heard, and I was instantly sputtering. "What?! It just.. It looks like a really big… Spider bite.”

"Good observation, Mokou." I genuinely couldn't tell if Eirin was being serious or sarcastic when she said that, but she left no time between saying it and moving on to dwell on intent. "Swelling is quite heavy. Wound doesn't appear to be festering. Does it hurt at all, child?"

“Nope!” Tomoe said with a smile. “If you ask me? It’s gonna go away. Like stubbing a toe. It’s bad at first, but eventually you forget it ever happened.”

What struck me about the way she said that was that it wasn’t that far off from how I viewed getting hurt; everything was temporary, annoyances that came and went. It was a kind of perpetual childishness where, when you removed consequences, everything that should have mattered became nothing more than a hassle. It had been so long now that I had forgotten what it felt like to care about a nick or a scrape or a great big bloody gouge. They washed over and past me. They always would, both a comfort and a curse.

But there in that miserable little doctor's office, staring at that nasty pair of wounds on Tomoe's back, I realized that trying to do that here would be pretending. And despite myself, I felt… Something. I wasn't exactly sure what yet, but something.

"Udongein." Her voice was like a demeaningly snapped finger. Reisen, who had been half-huddled off to the side ever since we walked in here and receiving little more than the occasional irritated glare for not warding us off as she'd been instructed to previously, snapped to attention. The spooked rabbit even did a little salute, which Eirin ignored utterly. "Anti-inflammatory drugs, please."

"Y-Yes, master." With practiced panic, she went through a nearby drawer, eventually producing a small wooden medicine box that proved to be filled with capsules, two of which she gave Tomoe. She swallowed them down unquestioningly.

“If I may, Doctor Yagokoro,” Keine’s voice sounded dry and a little crackly. She was doing a good job of stuffing away emotions. “Three other men in the Human Village have received these bites in the past month or so. No one knows exactly what’s causing them. I was hoping you might.”

“Unfortunately, no. They’re large enough that a youkai being behind it is fairly unquestionable, but I don’t know what could have caused it based on sight alone.” Eirin glanced up at Keine, pausing her examination. “The other victims. What became of them?”

No answer, which was an answer implicit enough that it managed to suck all the air out of the room. The only sound was Tomoe's carefree humming, which all of a sudden was stabbing at me with every little off-key note she produced. After a time, Keine finally seemed to find the words, but it didn't make the atmosphere any less grim: "There was a reason I sought this place out."

“I see.” Eirin put a finger to her chin, deep in thought. Keine shifted uncomfortably. I felt more awkward than I had since all of this began, which was an achievement in and of itself. There was this weird and inescapable feeling I was getting that demanded I say something. Anything, really, other than staring either at this girl who didn't seem to know how much trouble she was in or her guardian who seemed to know all too well.

Once again, against all odds, the lifeline to the situation ended up being the most frustrating, wretched person in the room.

“You made the right decision, Miss Kamishirasawa. Very wise.” Kaguya clapped her hands together in a grand, resounding gesture that felt like it was trying to let all the tension out of the room like air from a balloon.

“I…” Keine, very cautiously, tilted her head. “..did?”

“Well, of course. The medicine of the Lunarian Capital is far beyond that of anything you could hope to find in this world, even from the highest of your sages. You have my wonderful teacher to thank for that.” Once again, Eirin seemed completely caught off guard by Kaguya, and this time I didn’t blame her. She was being far too gregarious even if she’d taken a mild liking to Tomoe on the way in.

"Be that as it may, throwing medicine at a problem without a root cause identified is utterly pointless. To prescribe anything, I'd have to do some studying of the-" Eirin began, but Kaguya once again smoothly took over for her. I don't think I'd ever seen the princess so thoroughly bossing her around, and judging by the wide eyes, I don't think she had either.

"The wound, naturally. Studying the wound. What else? Thankfully, we have this whole outer house, and it's got beds that are almost never occupied. The rabbits mostly take care of themselves, yes?" She tittered. It was a noise not really directed at anything other than creating an air about herself to distract from the fact that she was doing… Doing something. I wasn't entirely sure what yet. Unfortunately, I was about to find out. "You won't object to poor little Tomoe staying for a time and being seen to, correct, Eirin?"

“....Princess Kaguya. Do you really think that is wise? You’re not feeling a bit shaken from your fight last night, are you?” Eirin regarded her with sharp eyes for the first time since all of this had begun. Kaguya gave them right back.

"To the contrary, I believe I am thinking more clearly than I have in quite some time. You're more than capable enough of taking care of a single patient, of course." There was an unspoken argument happening here that I normally wouldn't have cared to unwind from its hiding place, but the sinking feeling I was getting was only increasing. While she was talking, she kept sneaking glances in my direction. She was doing something here, and I could already feel it was going to end up involving me.

“There would have to be conditions of course. First and foremost, visits. I assume she doesn’t have parents, as you guided her here rather than them, yes?” I wanted to slap the shit out of her. How could you just say that out loud in front of a goddamn kid?! The only thing that kept me from going off on her was Tomoe’s lack of reaction. Keine, jaw set, only nodded. Didn’t wanna ruin her chances of a windfall no matter how stupid this woman was, huh?

"Good. And the only other condition, I suppose… Well, you can't exactly go through the forest by yourself, now, can you?" Kaguya smiled serenely. Keine opened her mouth and shut it when she realized the question wasn't really for her. She was staring directly at me. There it was! I knew it was coming, but it didn't stop the angry tug I felt as the snare trap she had been setting up over the last few minutes was finally triggered.

“Two conditions. The first is that until Tomoe is better, you’ll be visiting Eintei twice a week. The second is that on every one of those visits, Mokou accompanies you. To keep you safe, of course. I trust you have no objections?” Keine bit her lip, and glanced at me as I felt walls closing in on my happy little life of solitude from all directions.

I didn’t have to do this. I didn’t have to do any of this, dammit. I was a free person. I had little, and I was happy with what little I had. A shack in the woods and a daily life of peace and quiet interrupted only occasionally by getting in fights with Kaguya. You might think that doesn’t sound like much, but what do you know? Even with the things I’ve told you, what the hell do you know what I need? What I “should” want?

I knew what I wanted. I knew what I needed. But as I positively vibrated with anger, I looked across the room at Tomoe, humming merrily with those two gouges in her back. And I heard the unsaid promise of what would happen if something wasn’t done. I heard it again and again and again and again and again. A manic echo. And with it, warranted or not, came exactly what Kaguya was hoping for: responsibility.

Kaguya and Keine stared at me expectantly. Eirin, too, watched, the puzzle pieces beginning to fall into place for her well ahead of me. She'd already figured out precisely what Kaguya was after here well before I did. And she was now, begrudgingly, coming to some degree of acceptance: "If I must, I'll hold up my end of the bargain. That only leaves..."

I threw my hands up helplessly. And then, I finally replied.

—

“Want a cigarette?”

We had made our way back from Eintei sans Tomoe. Her not being there changed the whole atmosphere far more than I expected it would. Yeah, about a million miles away from the trip on the way in. No curious questions about every little thing in all of creation. No excited "are-we-there-yet" repetitions. Just… Silence. Me and Keine. Mine was in frustration, and hers was in apology, I think. Neither of us said a thing until we passed back by my house, and I just got tired. Of seeing her being tired, I mean. I made her sit.

Now I was looking at her incredulously as she held open a small tin of the things, short and hand-rolled, in front of me: "I've been bitching about cigarettes all day and you just ignored it until now?"

Despite asking that question, I didn't hesitate to take one. Keine nodded: "I apologize."

She took one of her own and pursed her lips around the tip, leaning back with her hands gripping the edge of the porch we were sitting with our legs dangling half off of. She reached back into the pouch she’d taken the tin from, rooting for something else and then cursing under her breath.

Flame ignited. Not a grand explosion, no phoenix fire of rebirth, but a small ember on my upturned index finger. Keine froze mid-scrounge, irises focusing on the tiny mote for a few moments as her mind seemed to reconcile with what she was seeing before she leaned in close enough to it to light the cigarette. It simmered burnt orange like the sky above us, night ushering its way into Gensokyo to put this trying day to rest.

"If we're going to be stuck together, you were going to find out I wasn't normal sooner or later. Might as well head the fear and terror off here." I lit my own and took a drag, trying to let it consume everything that was weighing on me. That'd probably have taken the whole tin if I was being honest.

“I apologize,” Keine repeated. “From the very beginning you wanted nothing to do with us, and everything just seemed to spiral out of control.”

"I just showed you something I've gotten entire villages chasing me more than once for doing, and you're apologizing for being annoying?" I exhaled in a disbelief which was rapidly becoming begrudging acceptance at this point. It hadad been since the moment I met her if I was being honest.

"This is Gensokyo, Miss Fujiwara. A land of magic and miracles. You've given me no reason to be afraid of you." Really? Despite how hard I tried? But I would have been lying if I didn't feel selfish, stupid relief that she had accepted it so quickly. I watched the remnants of our ashy puffs snake upwards toward the rising moon. The smoke clawed and fought upwards to meet it but simply dissolved in midair uselessly, time and time again. Miracles, magic, that could only get you so far. Some things were not, and never would be, meant for such heights.

“It’s not your fault, anyway. It’s Kaguya’s. And I want you to at least know she’s using you to get at me. I don’t know how, but that’s all she cares about at the end of the day.” The bitterness rising in my voice was irrepressible. What was she up to? What did she think she was going to get out of this? Just inconveniencing me? Fittingly petty, yes. In character to make unfair demands, yes. But it seemed too complicated and involved for that. The endgame had to be deeper.

“Why do you dislike each other so much?” Keine asked. I shook my head.

“Long story. Don’t feel like telling it.” The schoolteacher reluctantly nodded. I was glad for her not pressing. I had enough stuff dragging me down already.

“She can use me all she wants, as long as the end result is Tomoe’s condition improving. I don’t care. I’m not important.” Keine’s eyes went down to the ground below us as I continued to stare up. “I made a promise to take care of that girl, and so far I’ve done a rotten job. I deserve whatever consequences I get. But you should have never been caught in the crossfire. So-”

“So it’s fine. Consider yourself officially forgiven, okay?” I growled. “If you spend every day I see you apologizing it’s going to drive me twice as nuts, so cut it out with the pity party.”

"I'll do my best." She smiled bitterly. I didn't like how it looked on her face; it was lopsided and wrong. I knew how it felt to want someone to be angry with you. To hate you. But even after knowing Keine for a day, I realized that was a poor fit for her. No, I think maybe she only wanted to be forgiven for something I didn't know the extent of yet, and I wasn't in a place to give.

The silence grew. It stretched on into the zone of discomfort. I didn’t know exactly how to break it- I didn’t know how to do a lot of things anymore after being alone for so long. As all of this stretched on, and it was going to as you’ll find, I got a bit better. Never perfect. I did, though, improve beyond my next space-filling effort: “You never did tell me why you didn’t give me one of those cigarettes earlier.”

“I’d been trying not to think about them. Trying to quit. To be honest, I did quit. It's been a month.” She smiled wistfully, stubbing out the remainder of the short thing on the edge of the deck. “I suppose they say that good things never last.”

I don't know who "they" are to say this, but I agree. Good things were gone in the blink of an eye. Bad things seem to stretch on forever. The only safe place was the middle: "no things." Emptiness. A life of doing nothing, experiencing nothing. Just… Existing at the bare minimum. What I didn't know at that point was you couldn't do that. Not forever, as I was hoping, anyway. Forever was a long time, and time wasn't content to be filled with empty space.

"Mokou…?" Keine asked cautiously. I glanced at her and realized she was staring at my hand, where my cigarette had burnt down to almost nothing and begun to sizzle and simmer away at my index finger mercilessly. I didn't even pretend to be alarmed. I just mashed down on the remnant with a thumb and snuffed it out.

Yes. Yes. Good things never last.

“C’mon,” I muttered and pushed off of my porch. “Let’s get you out of the forest.”

And we were gone. We were off into the looming night.

Notes:

This is the point where I stopped previously when writing this story. In the end, I wrote the last two chapters pretty much entirely though so that doesn't mean much I suppose. All new territory from here on out regardless.