/jp/ - Otaku Culture

It was that sentimentality again. She really needed to reconstruct her spectral self and have a word with her. She'd grown fond of Meiling, and that fondness had been forced on her all at once. It would take some time for her mind to stop rejecting it. She couldn’t just switch to liking someone as if she’d spent a year with them when her body hadn’t yet caught onto that fact.

Meiling suddenly seemed to have finished. She looked up, her blue eyes catching the sunlight and seeming to positively sparkle. She wasn’t awake. Neither in the sense of this being the real world or her consciousness being in control. The gatekeeper stared at Patchouli for a moment, and then frowned. She blinked twice, confusion washing over her features, before recognition sparked in her eyes. "...Lady Patchouli?" She finally asked. “Is…Is that you?”

"It's me, Meiling." Patchouli replied, watching as Meiling squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. She’d regained some level of consciousness, then. "Finish getting your food ready. We need to talk." The room that Patchouli had appeared in. She needn't tell Meiling. She'd go there instinctively. Patchouli turned and pushed back through the cloth, retracing her steps to find the room. Once there, she pulled out the chair next to the window, sat down, and closed her eyes.

Her memories were still a mess. Her body in the real world was likely even more of a mess than it had been, but that could wait. She needed to meditate, but at the moment, she was still in better shape than Meiling was. The body is a marvellous thing. Even with youkai - Or perhaps, especially with youkai - Mental defences were paramount to the body's survival. Meiling would never have expected this. Her mind might not have known how to cope. And when the mind doesn't know how to cope...It retreats.

"Lady Patchouli?" Patchouli opened her eyes to find Meiling at the door with a plate stacked high with steaming rice and four bao buns in a basket in her other hand. "Um...Why are you here…?"

"Sit down, Meiling." Patchouli told her. "You'll not want to remain standing for the duration of the conversation, would you?" Meiling slowly nodded as she set down the plate and the basket in the centre of the table before taking the seat opposite Patchouli. With the window open, the sunlight streamed in and illuminated them both. To Patchouli, it wasn’t the most pleasant thing. To Meiling, it seemed to be wonderful. "Tell me something, Meiling. Where are we currently located?" Patchouli asked. She had a fairly sure guess, but she wanted to hear it from Meiling herself.

"...China." Meiling slowly replied, pressing her hand against her head. "It's, um, a monastery. At least, I'm fairly sure it is." Yes, that would explain the noises she'd heard in the distance.

"...Taoism?" Patchouli asked as Meiling placed two sets of chopsticks on the table. She nodded in thanks, delicately taking one set and breaking it apart. “A Taoist monastery?”

"Tai chi, but..." Meiling nodded as she looked out of the window. "This is the Wudang mountains, so Taoism is practiced here too." Meiling looked confused, and Patchouli wasn't surprised. Patchouli reached forward and tried the rice. It tasted...Like the best fried rice she'd ever eaten. Exactly like it. So exact that she knew for sure that it wasn't real. It was evoking her memory of that meal. "Lady Patchouli, why are we here?" Meiling pressed her hand against her forehead again. “I’m…I’m struggling to remember.”

"What do you remember?" Patchouli asked as she watched a golden leaf fall from the trees outside.

"I-I was at the gates..." Patchouli turned back and watched the confusion run across Meiling's face again. "No, I…I was in...Sekai's world. In the HSE. And - And you were there." The memories were even more jumbled for Meiling than they had been for Patchouli, it seemed. "What...?"

"The mind, Meiling, is a fragile thing. Even more so for youkai. We are more susceptible to mental weaknesses, after all." Patchouli looked out of the window again, taking in the details. "I've spent considerable years working at my mental defences, so I was prepared." Meiling slowly took a bite of one of the bao buns. "Unfortunately, I believe you were less prepared. Your ki control is most likely unrivalled by any in Gensokyo, but even that is no match against being forced to bear the brunt of a year's worth of memories all at once. This place...Tell me about it."

"Er..." Meiling frowned even as she took another bite of her food. Hesitantly, she spoke up. "I don’t remember how I got her, so I don’t know how to leave, either…Am I going to be okay?"

Hong in autumn.