/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45404525
In the following days, my life continued on, but it felt like a balancing plate act. Running the Suzunaan and being a mother was already plenty of work, but now I had to make occasional visits out to discuss things with Marisa and her compatriots. There wasn’t much to do. It seems that they already made up their plan and my input wasn’t needed to tweak it. Most of the time we just sat around and talked. Advice for Marisa for the upcoming months, a potential party for Hana who made missed her birthday during her disappearance, and other small talk like that. Of course, Mima and Shinki always made sure to remind me of my duty as a spy. They made it sound so simple. Just go into the HSE and find something that looked important and bring it back to us. They assured me that they wouldn’t pay attention to me and if they caught me, they probably wouldn’t kill me, Which was a weird way of assuring me.

But what really washed over me with a typhoon was everything that happened with Keine. I had expected the truth behind her lack of pregnancy to come out, but never would I have expected this level of vitriol. In just a few days, horrible rumors spread over the village like a sickness, growing worse with each retelling. A man at the teahouse said Keine had an affair with a married man, and he made her get an abortion to get rid of the bastard. It must be the Hieda’s patriarch, they claimed. She was always close to him and he was never quite the same after his daughter’s death. He’d he the influence to make her have an abortion. A woman visiting my library claimed otherwise. She said that Keine was spotted around the HSE. Oh yes, it was so scandalous, but Keine was single for so long of course she would have to go to a place like that. She must have gotten knocked up when she visited and his birth control failed, not that she would know anything about how that place worked, she was only telling me what others told me, of course. So when she got pregnant she had to get an abortion out of shame. There were other rumors, but as they got progressively disgusting, I did my best to ignore them.

It infuriated me. Keine was the one that taught their children. She was a great teacher that always did her best to help them learn and grow, although she wasn’t forgiving of those who missed homework. When Reimu was pregnant and nursing, it was Keine who stepped up and offered to take on more duties to keep the village safe, all while still doing her day job as a teacher. Years of kindness and goodwill were killed in just a few days. All because of some rumors nobody bothered to verify. She was fired from the job she loved and she excelled at because of them. She she ostracized from the village, treated like a lame animal slowing down the pack when just weeks ago, she was beloved by all. It made my blood boil.

But then her future changed quite literally overnight. It was the night where she collapsed in front of Alice’s home, two newborns in her arms. When she recovered, she had explained it all to me. How they fell out of the sky into her arms. How she fought like hell to save them, and how she wanted them to be hers. She had taken them home with her, but it ate away at me. Normally I would have trusted her to care for them with just a bit of advice from me. But here she was was without a job and all treated like a leper by the village. She had already turned down my offer of a job. Even now she was more worried on opposing on me then herself. Geez, this woman. She needed help, but I had to do so in a way that wouldn’t make her think I was offering too much.

I struggled to hold the box in my hands as I knocked on the door with my foot. As I wobbled to keep my grip, the door opened a few moments later. “I brought some old baby stuff” I announced as I wobbled over to a free spot on the floor and dropped it “I went up and got some baby formula, I also have some diapers; we can go over how to use them today. I have some old blankets you can use for them and some toys when they got older, I don’t have much in the way of clothes but with all the pregnancies going on some of the women were talking about getting together and making a bunch, so I can get you some when they’re done..” I take everything out of the box to show Keine.
“This is quite a lot” Keine said. Even now, she was concerned about charity. She had no reason to worry. I didn’t dip into my families fund for all of the new stuff, I dipped into my book fund. Sure it was painful having to hold off on buying some books I had my eye on for a while, but in this world there were two or three things more important then books, and friends were one of them.

>>45323085
Sure, I don't mind.