/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I scratched my head with my other hand, since Kisami had taken control of my entire left arm. Then, a question occurred to me. Something I'd half been wondering since I'd met Meiling properly at the Grassroots Youkai Network meeting. Kisami looked incredibly similar to Meiling, which made no sense. So, finally, I let my curiosity get the better of me and asked Kisami if she knew someone called Meiling. "Mei...No, don't think so." She said, scratching her head. "Why? Are you marrying her too?" No, I said as I shook my head. It was a question I'd been meaning to ask. She was a Chinese gatekeeper at the Vampire's mansion. "A Chinese...Oh! I think I remember now. Back when we did the work at the mansion, I did meet a strange person like that." A strange person? I asked Kisami what had happened. "It was...Weird. That, girl - You said Meiling? I nodded. "Yeah, she, uh, hugged me. I think she thought that she knew me? She called me her sister, but I’m definitely not Chinese, so…"

That seemed to make some sense. Meiling had mentioned her sister, who probably had similar hair to Meiling herself. Kagerou hadn't quite remembered the name, but she'd thought it was a fruit, and Orange had been one of her suggestions, so I'd assume that it was Orange for the time being. And Meiling had probably confused Kisami for Orange, which did raise the question of what had actually happened to Orange, but that was neither here nor there. Instead, I asked Kisami further. "Sorry, but no, I've never met her before. I'm a Kurodani, through and through. I'm the big sister to a lot of the others, including your soon-to-be wife." That got me to draw a sharp breath in, and I felt a warm feeling inside me at the idea of marrying Yamame again. "Is that a blush?" Kisami asked, squeezing my arm tighter. "Aw, you're just so cute!" I frowned down at her, and she burst into giggles. “If you keep frowning like that, your face is gonna get stuck in that pose. We’ll see how Yamame feels about marrying you then.” Taking her words for the light-hearted jab I hoped they were meant to be, I forced my face to relax.

This continued until we finally made it to the section of the Hot Springs Town that the Kurodani family had all but taken over. Here, there were suddenly far more short girls with brown overalls and various flavours of black, brown and golden hair then there had been the last time I had been here. Curious, I asked Kisami about her hair colour. "Like it?" She asked, twirling a lock of it around her finger. It was currently completely wild, looking to be about the bushiest thing I'd ever seen. Even Yamame couldn't hope to compare to Kisami's hair in sheer volume. She could clearly tell the question I had on my lips. "Oh, yeah. It's all red." Wait, that wasn't- "I mean, it's naturally red. Yep." I decided to ignore her first response and instead asked her why her hair was red while all her other sisters seemed to have various shades of black, brown and yellow. "Uh...No clue. Some of my sisters - The ones who are the same age as me - have hair like mine, too. Must have just been luck." Luck? "Oh, definitely. Red hair? I wouldn't trade this for anything." Well, at least she was proud of it. “Who wouldn’t be?” She asked me with a raised eyebrow. “It’s part of me. I’m proud of all of me. What, do you not like your hair?” I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest. I liked it well enough, I supposed. “Interesting style, too…” Kisami muttered, reaching a hand up to flick at a loose strand. I grumbled a little, because at some point, I’d started putting it into the style that Reimu had once done to me without really thinking about it, even though I was certain that it made me look a little bit wild.

We'd attracted some stares from the other Kurodani sisters along the path, and I finally had to pull my arm away from Kisami in case someone got the wrong idea. "Aw, I was enjoying that." Kisami muttered, but conceded and released me. "It's okay!" Kisami called to some of the other girls watching us. "He's taken!" Now echoing Yamame even more, I said Kisami's name in a slightly scandalised tone, which sent her into a fit of laughter that delayed our arrival to the house that the Kurodani family had taken over even more. “Oh, you sound just like her!” She cried, holding onto my arms for support. “She’s really rubbed off on you, hasn’t she?” She tried to continue walking, then broke into another fit of giggles.