/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Finally, the crazy girl pushed me to a building which looked like a regular house, but had a smaller side building attached to it. It was in the more affluent part of the village, so I assumed that the girl really was royalty. "Inside, punk! Into the interrogation room!" And she dragged me through the door and into a small room which contained a desk full of papers, a table and two chairs on either side. The desk, I noticed, had some sort of hooks in them, but I wasn't sure what they were for. The papers didn't seem to actually have anything on them, but I didn't mention it. She forced me into one of the seats and uncuffed me, only to cuff one of my hands to the hook things so that I couldn't leave the table. "Right!" She said brightly. "Right..." She stepped over to the desk, apparently searching for some things, then joined me at the desk and sat on the opposite side. "Officer Kotohime, interrogating detained suspect." She said, writing something down in the notebook she had carried over. "Now, I'll start simple." She reached into her kimono and extracted three papers, which she slammed down on the desk one after the other. "I've got witness statements, from members of the community. All of them evidence concerning your dangerous and strange behaviour!"

I cast my eyes down at the papers she had slammed onto the table. All of them were written in the same handwriting. Not one of them had identified me by name. And finally, none of them seemed to be anything that actually sounded incriminating. "Here, in the middle of summer, you were seen in the company of a strange woman!" That could be anyone, I protested. "Quiet!" Kotohime yelled at me. "And here, you were seen wearing strange items of clothing that had dangerous messages!" They were a gift, and even if they were a little strange, so what? I'd been trying to get back from- "Shut up! I'm doing the talking!" She shouted again. Apparently, I wasn't the first person she'd done this to, so even though I had actually done the things in the statements, I imagined that she'd just taken any old situation that I'd been seen in as her 'evidence'. "Finally, I've got a statement saying that you died after falling to your death out in the mountains. How do you answer that, wise guy?" I stared at her. Clearly, Kogasa Tatara's hysteria was just as widespread as I'd feared. That farmer I'd spoken to had said much of the same, but I'd hoped that he was just overexaggerating. Well, I said, obviously the rumours of my death were greatly exaggerated. "Oh, come on, you think that sort of weak excuse will fly with me?" Kotohime said in a mocking tone, slamming her hand on the desk again, which made me jump. "You're a youkai, aren't you?"

...What? "You heard me, a youkai! You died and came back as a youkai!" Surely, she realised how ridiculous that sounded. You couldn't just die and show up again as a youkai. What would you even be? A youkai of falling down a hole? "And how do you know so much about the process, huh? Because it's how you came back, am I wrong?" Common sense, I replied. And Miss Kamishirasawa's temple school, not to mention the countless hours I'd spent at Suzunaan as a child reading anything I could find, plenty of which had involved youkai being born in strange ways, but never in the way that Kotohime suspected that I was. "That's a lot of words for a pointless explanation! You're suspicious and I think you're conspiring with the Shrine Maiden to destroy the village!" With...What? This whole thing made no sense. "Aha! Got you now, haven't I!?" I just stared at her. She reached into her kimono and pulled out one last piece of 'evidence', this one a statement and a scribbled sketch that showed what could potentially be me along with Reimu, Tenshi and Marisa in the café, discussing something. "This is my eyewitness testimony, and it states that you were conspiring with three other suspects to destroy and attack people!" I...really didn't think that was the case. Surely, she was smart enough not to believe that? "You can't sweet-talk your way out of this one!"

If I'd thought that I was confused before, it was even worse now. "I've got more evidence, too." She began pulling more and more statements out, and I started to wonder where she'd been hiding them all. "You were spotted in the village wearing a strange new outfit - The same one you're wearing now - and in the company of a suspicious, unknown blonde girl!" My 'date' with Yamame, where Hearn had kidnapped us. I didn't mention it out loud, and instead said that she had no proof that I'd done anything wrong. "So you have done something wrong?" She asked, jumping to an illogical conclusion again. I shook my head. She stared at me for a few moments longer. "I'm calling for a break. Get your thoughts in order, and when I come back, you can tell me all about your conspiracy to destroy the village." I shouted that I had no such plans as she left the room and slammed the door behind me, leaving me alone.