/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>44886770
False. I like Reimu and I still want her to hurt me.

>>44746813
The streets looked different. The shadows seemed to be dark pools that I could step into all fall into an endless pit. Even if I knew it was silly, I avoid the darkest patches. I rounded the corner to my street, but found I made a mistake. Maybe my mind was in other places. I backtracked and tired to get my bearings. I couldn’t quite recognize any of these houses. Maybe the darkness was more then I thought. No need to panic, there was still enough moonlight out to walk. All I had to do was find a landmark and I could make my way home. I followed my general sense of direction to where I thought the center of the village was, knowing I could find my way home from there.

Was it this dark when Yukari dropped me off here? For some reason I couldn’t remember. It was a while ago, right? So why was it so dark now? I didn’t even recognize this street I was going down now at all. No, don’t panic. Just keep walking and you’ll get home. I wandered through the streets, just waiting for a place I knew to pop up so I could set my path home. I paused. Did I heard something? Yes, voices, coming from over here. It wasn’t too strange, there was a nightlife in the village if you knew where to look. I could go there and get my bearings. I followed the voices, sometimes pausing to correct myself. It didn’t take too long to find myself in front of a building. There was no signage for it, and I’ve never seen it before. Might as well duck in, if it were one of the seedier places in the village I could always leave and forget about it.

I entered. It was a large building. A bar sat in the corner, and tables were places on the edges of it, leaving a large space in the center. It was pretty packed despite how late it was, and music played. I couldn’t see any musicians. Must be one of those phonograph things that some people. here have. So it It must be some kind of club or restaurant. I go over to the bar, getting over the embarrassment of asking for help in a strange place like this. “Excuse me, what is this place? I got a bit lost, so if you could direct me to somewhere like the village center, that would help me a lot” The bartender didn’t even look up at me and continued to move bottles around on the shelves. I waited a few seconds and repeated myself. Still nothing. I glanced at the customers sitting at the bar to see if they heard me. It was a pretty normal crowd. A young woman, a middle aged man, a kitsune. A kitsune? She was right out in the open, tails and ears exposes to the whole world and nobody seemed to notice. I glanced around the room. Like if someone had torn down a veil, it was filled with youkai. Ghosts flitted about carrying drinks, humans sat at tables and talked with kappa, a tengu was in the corner looking out for something.

It was wrong. For humans and youkai to be so openly mixing without fear could be of huge consequence. Youkai had to be careful with choosing when to coexist with humans or else the whole system this world was build on would go down. Youkai had to make sure humans still held some sort of fear or reverence to them even if they didn’t hold any harm. I was going to interfere and nip this problem in the bud before it could progress any further. If I could only speak to the owner. Maybe if I drew them out. I found myself drawn to a corner where the phonograph was playing. A great idea came to mind. If I turned it off, then they would pay attention to me. I reach out, and stopped the needle. Everything feel silent. Not just the music, but all the voices died as soon as the music did. I stopped around. Everyone was frozen looking at me.

“I need to speak to the owner of this place. Where are they?” I announced. Nobody spoke up. I marched forward, looking if anyone would speak, but I froze. They were all dolls. Large, life sized dolls. Nobody could mistake these for living things, but a few moments ago they were so life-like, moving and speaking. I cautiously poked one and it fell over. The rest of the world followed. The walls of the building fell down, I could see they were just four sheets of thin wood now. The dark velvet curtains, not darkness as I had thought, parted and I was blinded by red and white lights. I had to run, but my movements were not my own. Long strings going all the way up to the now open sky, were anchored to my wrists and ankles. They forced me to walk forward, closer to the source of the light. I could hear loud voices echoing, but none of the words made sense. Then, I stopped. The strings moved further and further up my body, reaching my neck. As they formed a noose around it and hoisted me up in the sky, I kicked and clawed at it, trying to get free. But I felt my breath drain from me. As it all went dark and I gave up, I saw some large shadow reach out for me.

My eyes shot open. Safe in my futon, my lungs still full of air, but my air still raced. I checked my neck. No markings.