/jp/ - Otaku Culture

slowly working your way into her heart as her assistant and helping her when her physical frailties get the better of her.

>>45591177 (2/2—p2)
—













"—No, that's not—" My body jolts as my eyes open wide, breath tense. I urgently look around: Hata no Sekai is gone; the tree is gone; luminous cracks on the ground gone; only the illusion of a peaceful shrine; raindrops resuming to fall; a broken sigil carved on the ground and lots of spectral ash scattering with the wind. As always with Sakuya's power, not a second passed from the moment we left this plane to the womb where Sekai resides… Yet… I firmly hold my forehead, eyes narrowing. That whole ordeal by itself was electrifying, but by the end…

… Something is amiss… Like something was ripped away from my brain.

As understanding comes—Meiling to my side, which had fallen on her butt, was gazing at her trembling hands, likely reaching a similar conclusion—, I cannot help but shudder. "She adulterated our minds." I say it together with an exhalation, the words sounding tired and loaded. "… What do you remember still?"

Meiling slowly nods, retelling her experience, and, bitterly, it stops at the same point as mine: Sekai's threat of warring against the world for the sake of her shattered family and fate, a thousand eyes of sadness and loneliness; of boundless righteous anger, all grafted to a kind soul. Utter paranoid yet soft and sweet to a fault—the offspring of a benignant man and a Sage. "Why'd she do that? She asked for help, told us a lot… I wanted to help her." Surprisingly, Meiling bit her tongue. "But just getting close and touching her shoulders… Last time I felt like this, Reimu said there was a war on the moon—I need to meditate." The guardian wearily sighed, rubbing her face with her hands.

Did we make an assumption that turned out to be right? Had she told us too much? Something to keep us safe—to keep someone else safe?! My thirst was infernal, uncomfortable; I NEEDED to know what she erased from our minds. I need to know so many, many things about that mystique-filled hall of wonderment that Hata no Sekai called womb—the spectral animals, the cracks, the Sakura tree, Sekai herself. My eyes are wide, gleaming; my smile is of foolish appearance; and my spectral, disease-free body shivers with exhilaration.

Oh, I'm four again, reading a promiscuous passage about the fantastic yet blasphemous world of magic. A haven was found in Gensokyo for magicians, but the flavoring of profanity, of immorality magic had outside was what I could call my second home, the place in which I started, mainly due to the infuriating limitations of the old world's ways. The essence of magic is to determine the root of everything, and mingling in the mud, going all the way below the earth to reach the untainted truth always upsets the comfortable one.

I have to know more.

I run to the sigil, stumbling along the way, spectral dress freely swaying—Meiling eying me oddly—, gathering the few ghostly pages that weren't burned, thoroughly salvaging what survived of my weeks of research and unbothered by the need to start it whole again. I'd start over ten thousand times if I could reach that place even once more— "Oi, Patchy," Meiling approaches me, kneeling by my side to help with collecting the usable remains. "Are you alright?"

"I've never been better, Meiling! This cursed place has wielded crops of quality unfathomable until hours ago! It has sown seeds inside my primordial mind—seeds that'd take lesser men to the moon!" Her surprised eyes at my joy are expected.

"What are you planning to do?"

"Go back there, of course. I need to explore, study that place—it's not a masterpiece of conjoined barriers, Meiling; it's naturally formed; it draws from the world! It's fire to the first human, a knife to the first murderer!" I giggle, getting all I can and sprinting inside the shrine, collecting spectral versions of every piece of paper I can land my hands on—

"I don't think we should go back there…"

—I come to a full halt. My eyes on Meiling are of disbelief. "What?" She crosses her arms—she knows I understood her words—towering over me. It's nothing to my cold anger. "Why not? It's an unexplored wonderland, and I got there once blind; I can easily—"

"Sekai helped us get there; the rite failed—and besides, for her to erase our memory means she doesn't wanna talk anymore."

"So?" I raise an eyebrow.

"So getting back to that… place… should be impossible. It's a waste of our time, she said herself she'll make the world suffer if we can't get out by winter! We need to find a way back home."

My anger boils, but the life inside the Voile is nothing but quiet and measured. "This may be my only chance of getting there, Meiling. The potential is too raw to worry about meager threats made by a child. Be patient; we will return home, but this comes first."

She sighs. "Patchy… it's not worth it."

"It will be." I sit on the kotatsu, thirsting for knowledge and adamant on hunting this deer. "Now, stop pestering me. I need to concentrate."

Meiling stared, ruffled her hair, and left, sulking.