/jp/ - Otaku Culture

What defines an induvial in the miracle of their birth?

This question, although many would say otherwise, has never had a true answer. Youkai, gods, and spirits alike call to legends and superstitions to explain their procreation, but they're a product of Humanity and until Humans can comprehend the blessing of their own life, they will never know their own.

And yet, as incomprehensible as it is, life continues to happen.

Three gestating existences exist on top of the building, one the building itself, another trapped within it's walls, and the last within a space created by the absence of something else, yet still, some of it's energies flowed into the building.

But first, there was the building. Constructed with the singular purpose of holding one man captive by a jealous and Proud Woman, practically indestructible and, by her estimation, perfect in it's design. It would not be like the begotten tools in a shed that grow irate with their forgetful masters that become Youkai, nor would it be like the winds and the rains humans call down in the form of gods, and most certainly not like a vengeful spirit, it's existence only to enact vengeance. And perhaps it would have been, had the woman not been so enamored with her own perfect design.

The primary issue was capturing the energy of mating Youkai and Human faith, as the leakage of either could cause an imbalance that would lead to a disaster. So, the woman had built the building in layers, each filtering a different form of energy and safely expelling it some distance away. An elegant solution for a 'waste' byproduct and surprising difficult since each form had to be separated and processed in it's own way. Faith, Pain, favors of Youkai Energy, Comfort, all of it was accounted for, all of it, except the woman's own energy.

Her desire for a child, yet being incapable of having one corroded the system and caused the different energies to become captured and mixed until it formed a consciousness, what's more, all the 'waste' began to collect within it, seemingly making the system more efficient, which played into the woman's pride, blinding her from the forming child.

The child craved notice, but did not know how to receive it. Her father couldn't hear her cries, as he didn't have the ears to, her mother could not see her anguish, as her eyes were always elsewhere. It tried calling out to her myriads of kin, which only escalated her father's pain and acting out so her mother would notice, which only caused her to strengthen the prison she'd constructed.

Then there was the digger. The child felt the awkward and ill-constructed lines that someone drew toward her home and decided, in the faint hope someone would hear her, to help, nudging them ever closer until finally, a hole appeared. But nothing came from the other side and she could not leave, so she turned her attention elsewhere and did not notice when energy flowed from the hole.

The second child was slowly formed by these energies and clung, as tightly as it could, to the hole. It was enough for her to survive, but she knew this was only a fraction of her parents love and mewed as hard as she could for more. The building did not notice her, nor did the residents that would come to inhabit it, the second child saw this, a growing warmth in an accursed place, and sought blessings. Thus, it's nature would become something born of the accursed that attracted blessing to itself.

The third child was born out of the hole made by the Proud Woman, filled with the energies of her mother and father, the child was warm and knew blessings. But she was not content, for she could feel the energies that leaked from the place, the emptiness made by her sister's absence, and felt cold all the same. The third child saw this, a missing person denied warmth, her parent's anguish over her missing, and cried out for her accursed existence. Thus, it's nature would become something born of blessings that attracted curses to itself.

Then there was the matter of the sword, the Proud Woman's other 'perfect' creation, and all the other begotten children in between.

Not all fortune is a blessing and not all suffering is a curse. For the Father, a guardian he didn't know he had, for the Proud Woman, a child that was truly hers, for the ill-fated couple, a pair of children who would complete each other. Of course, there would be other children, other blessings, other curses, both before and after, but all of Gensokyo would remember the disaster of these births.