/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I woke up and found the spider that had been living in the corner of my room for weeks right next to my head
yams, if you want to sleep with me, then just tell me

I stared at her for a few moments. "Oh, fine, I'll leave you alone. Do come and visit, though. Poking them both with a stick is fun." I decided that the best thing to do was probably give her another hug so she wouldn't get any funny ideas about convincing Yamame to tie me up. It wasn't like Yamame couldn't come to that conclusion on her own, anyway. She'd already wrapped me up in her blankets, after all.

"Eugh, it's still so cold out here! C-Can we-" Yamame's voice surprised me a little, but I saw her emerging from the café alone, already wrapping her arms around herself to try and keep warm. "Um, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" I shook my head and let Reimu go. I tried not to think about it very often, but every now and then I did think about my parents. It usually hurt, but I did my best to move on. To think about the friends I had now. I would think about Yamame, and her family. What I hoped would one day also be my family. So, I pulled Yamame into a hug too. She seemed a little surprised, but relaxed after a moment. Once I'd released her, she took in a shaky breath. "Can we...Go home now?" I nodded, but looked over at Reimu again first.

"Feeling better?" She asked me. I was, actually. But my main concern was whether or not Reimu was going to need help getting home. "Pfft. No. I know you're a worrier, but I've gotten home after much worse, and while less sober. Get going, will you?" I felt a little chastised, so I nodded and returned to Yamame. "Oh, and...Have you seen Kasen recently?" I thought about it. The last time I'd seen her was in the Hot Spring Town in Former Hell. She and Raki had both been there since that party that they'd all had at Lady Kasen's dojo. "Wait, that long? Whoa." I'd thought the same sort of thing. Why was Reimu asking? "Well, it's just...She stopped showing up at the Shrine. The only time that's happened before is the year after the whole arm incident had happened." Somewhat teasingly, I asked Reimu if she missed her, but she didn't immediately reply, and the way she looked at the ground made me feel a bit bad. "...No! Definitely not!" Reimu told me, clapping her hands together and nodding vigorously. "Just curious if anyone was taking care of her pets, that's all." I imagined so. In fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if they were smart enough to take care of themselves, even in Lady Kasen's senkai. "Yeah. See, it's fine." Reimu smiled, though it seemed a little forced. "Well, I'd best be going. I'll see you tomorrow?" I nodded. "Okay, good. Yamame, take care of him."

"I'll do my best!" Yamame replied, waving as Reimu took to the air. I waved her off, and she disappeared into the darkness almost immediately. "Is she okay?" Yamame asked me. I sighed. I thought so, but I think she liked it when Lady Kasen came to lecture her more than she let on. "I wonder if Nai's ever said that about me." I looked over at her, then said that I didn't think any of her sisters would ever need an excuse to say they liked having her around. "Aw. Sweet." Yamame told me, kissing me on the cheek. "Shall we get going?" I nodded, since it was really very cold, and I could already see clouds on the horizon that would probably mean more snow.

The place was a little more treacherous to navigate at night, but eventually we reached the caves, which were only half covered in snow, so it was possible to slip through without needing to smash apart the whole thing. I didn't hold out much hope for tomorrow, though. "I'll help you smash through." Yamame told me. "But, er...I might stay at home. The cold's just...A bit much." I understood. It wasn't hugely pleasant to me, but I could bear with it better than Yamame could.

Finally, we were home. It seemed like it hadn't been all that long, but we'd been halfway around the world, imprisoned, and spent hours at Oseki's café before getting back here. "I was going to make food, but..." Yamame opened the door and stepped inside, then hopped up to the upper floor so she could hang her coat up. I draped my coat over the chair and wandered over to her bedroom, where I pulled off my sweater before getting straight under the covers. It was cold, after all, and I was tired. All that kidnapping had a way of draining the energy right out of me. "Oh, what have we here?" Yamame's voice asked, so I mumbled something and lifted the covers, then sighed in relief when she slipped in beside me, only to yelp when she touched me. Her hands were freezing cold. "Well, maybe you should go and complain to whoever convinced me to go and deliver Kagerou's hood today? Who was that, exactly?" I grumbled about sarcasm, then grabbed her hands so I could try to warm them up. "I think they'll warm up plenty soon enough." Yamame told me playfully, wrapping a leg around me and leaning in for a kiss.

I wondered if I should ask Eirin about energy supplements or something.

Reimu Hakurei was not knocking on the door of Yamame's house when I woke up, sore and stiff but feeling a lot better.

Which was good, because I was certain that if she was, I was going to start wondering if time was really passing or if I was stuck in some sort of time loop. No, I awoke feeling almost like I hadn't been sick at all. I wouldn't say I felt full of energy, but compared to yesterday, it was a marked improvement. What wasn't a marked improvement was the lack of anyone in the bed next to me, which I quickly decided was very disappointing. I was tangled up in so many blanket that I felt surrounded by warmth, but there was some sort of essential warmth missing that only sleeping with a person could add. Yamame Kurodani was not in the bed with me, and I very much wished she was.

Instead, I could hear indistinct voices. I assumed that one was Yamame, and the other was someone else, but I couldn't quite make out who it was. Clearly, Yamame had gotten up earlier than me but been worried about my warmth, because she had - and I could only assume this was some latent spider instinct that just couldn't be suppressed - apparently picked me up and wrapped the bedsheets around me like a spider wrapping up an insect in web, until I felt like the filling in a maki roll, except packed even tighter, because I soon realised that I was struggling to get free. I think I would have been concerned if it hadn't been bedsheets, but I was trying to change my perceptions of youkai, so I refused to let it bother me. My arms were practically pinned to my sides and I could only move my feet a tiny amount, which meant that when I tried to turn from the wall I was facing, all I really succeeded in doing was sending myself rolling across the bed completely helplessly. I tried kicking out with my feet to stop it, and I managed to just halt myself so that I was staring at the ceiling, but I had a very bad feeling that - based on the amount I had moved - I was dangerously close to the edge of the bed.

I didn't especially want to interrupt whatever Yamame was doing in the other room, but it was starting to look like I didn't have a choice. I sighed and let my head fall back, and then felt the panic grip me when the motion just barely shifted me slightly to the side. Instantly, I could tell that I was falling, and I knew that I would have no way to prevent it, so I grit my teeth and hoped I didn't land on my nose.

Instead, I landed on my stomach, my nose just barely missing the floorboards by what couldn't be more than the width of my finger. I let out a long and winded sigh, but also silently thanked Yamame for wrapping just enough bedding around me to keep my head safe. Of course, now I was in the exact same situation, but on the floor and with a sore stomach, which hardly seemed like much of an improvement, but it had shaken the bedding just enough for me to twist myself around and somehow roll myself until I was sitting against the side of the bed. My limbs were still basically pinned together, but I could at least see what was happening now.

Yamame's room was dimly lit, but I could see that there was a lot of, for lack of a better word, stuff piling up on the large, heavy-looking desk that took up the corner of the room. After a moment to prepare myself, I pushed back against the bed, using the momentum to bring my legs under me just enough for me to push down and launch myself to my feet. For a frightening, vertigo-inducing moment, I nearly lost my balance and tried to correct myself by swinging the arms that were still very much trapped inside the bedding, but I managed to hop forward and recover my balance just in time to prevent myself from falling headfirst into the corner of the desk. Even a peach couldn't save me from that one.

Now I was upright, but still just as stuck, and I was certain that I looked absolutely ridiculous. I couldn't walk properly, so I ended up having to shuffle forwards, slowly so as not to lose my balance. Once I reached the desk, I found that it was full of what looked like invoices. I'd only seen a small number of them in my time, typically from the odd jobs I had sometimes picked up to ensure I could still eat. This one was in a script that I couldn't read, but even so, it was reasonably clear that it was for a number of...something. The items I had seen piling up on the desk were clothing, in turned out. Yamame's clothing, but I was happy to see that some of the clothes I had worn to stagger here was freshly cleaned, too. I could see the golden bands that formed around the dress of Yamame's outfit carefully folded and piled up on top of the earthen dress that she wore over the thick, black shirt, though it was more like a working outfit than a normal shirt. I would have liked to see just what kind of material it really was, because from what I had felt, it wasn't quite like the sort of thing you'd wear casually, but my hands were still stuck, so I couldn't do much but look.

You have been woken by a spider.