/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>38521487
The memory was dark and dream-like. It felt like she was drawing it up from some impossibly far off place. She questioned if it was truly even a memory but surmised that it must have originated from before she woke up here, from before she was aware. She was just a normal umbrella in this memory, being carried by the person who must have been her owner. It was a young girl, but when she tried to recall her features, she found that she could not. The girl was walking with her friend on the road. It had just rained, and the road was filled with puddles, but this didn’t stop the two girls from merrily strolling along and laughing with each other. Suddenly came a cart, much like the one that had just passed, trundled by and splashed mud at the girls. Her owner turned her to the side, and she caught most of the muck and mire with her body, sparing herself and her friend from spoilage. At the recollection of being made useful in this way, she found that it gave her a warm feeling, though she couldn’t tell by what mechanism she could recall an event that had taken place prior to her gaining sentience. All the same, she was glad that she remembered once having had an owner, and this knowledge gave her confidence to meet humans in her new form. The memory ended with the girls laughing and continuing on walking.
She hopped out onto the sunny road. Having remembered the joyous memory, she wanted to encounter someone. Even though she could not speak and had this peculiar form, she was still an umbrella. This meant she could be of use again. And this thought was all she needed to continue in the same direction the cart went. She swiftly went along, leaving evenly spaced single footprints with her single geta between the two ruts left behind by the cart’s wheels. She was merry. The unhindered expanse afforded by the road, free from obstructions, felt as free as the birds in the sky to her. After some time, she heard two laughing voices and saw ahead two boys running along playing. Glad to have come across some people, she increased her pace, bounding high in the air and rapidly approaching the boys. She meant to proposition herself to them and see if they might take her into their care to use her for that which she was made. But this was not the case.
As soon as the boys become aware of her, they stopped. She stopped too, only a few yards away, and looked at them. She waved her tongue at them as a way of greeting, but then she noticed their faces. Their eyes were wide and they had grabbed onto each other, clearly horrified.
‘Waaaah!’ they screamed in their shrill voices. ‘A monster! A yokai! Run!’
She stood there and watched them disappear down the road. But she was more confused than crestfallen. She had only wanted to make herself useful to them. So why had they fled? She couldn’t understand these humans. A yokai…what was that? The longer she stood in the middle of the road and thought, the more her confusion gave way to a sinking feeling. If she had frightened these boys so, would it not be the same with all humans?
‘Oh, I don’t know…’ she sighed to herself.
She at that time noticed that she had left the confines of the forest and had come into a field of rice paddies. The sun had marched across the sky, passed its zenith, and had begun its late afternoon descent to the horizon. The flooded paddies shimmered with a bright golden glow. She hopped up to the edge of the waters, and bending over slightly, viewed her slightly distorted reflection. She looked at her features. In the middle of her ‘body’ was a great red eye. Below that was her jagged mouth, with her long tongue protruding from the immaterium within. The sun behind her back cast a long umbrella shaped shadow, and she saw her lone geta, thinking derisively how silly it looked. But the thing that stood out to her the most was her color, a dull purple. That color…it triggered a feeling within her which she couldn’t place. As she stared at her mirrored self, she remembered something else.

>>34112474
It's easy! Pick somewhere dark to hide, and when a human comes along, jump out and yell "Boo!" Now you try

>>34013806
Kogasa is not for bullying! I'll rewrite this story to be happy

You are a human from the human village. You have always been somewhat of an outcast, but not on account of you own doing. Your parents always went around spouting crazy ideas about how humans could coexist with youkai. Until one night when they wandered too far afield and were eaten by Rumia. There wasn't much left of their remains, but all that was your parents was interred at the Myouren Temple graveyard.

You resented them for their eccentricity, for you not being able to have a normal life. Children your own age even told jokes that you were a youkai yourself. For a while you lived in your parents home, doing what you could to eat. But one night you returned to find only ashes. You suspected it was a particularly vicious youkai hunter that had often been at odds with your parents. It didn't make sense to you, but as an orphan with no place to live you spent the days begging.

After a while you began to often visit your parents' grave. Afterall, you did love them, byut maybe it was more out of a sense of hopelessness. One evening when solemnly shuffling out of the graveyard, you start hearing another set of footsteps, just out of sync with yours. It's probably just a fairy, but to be safe you begin to pick up the pace a little, but the footsteps get closer and louder, and you start running through the list of youkai you know how to deal with in your head. Unfortunately, you run through that list pretty quickly, and you start thinking about the ones you can't handle.

Just as you're getting to some of the really mean ones, Kogasa drops down in front of you, hanging by her knees from a tree-branch. You were so absorbed in thought that you reflexively jump back, and before you can recover yourself, her huge umbrella-tongue gives your face a nice long lick. She giggles, says "Thanks for the meal, mister!", and floats away into the sky, leaving you weak and drained, barely able to stumble back into the human village.

For days you felt drained, barely able to drag yourself out of your ramshackle hovel to beg. The nicer residents would throw you some food here and there. Just enough to eat. It was funny. Had you been a normal boy with friends, they might have made fun of you for being scared by the blue-haired, young girl holding that ugly umbrella. But for you, it was just an inconvenience.

Would you still cross this bridge if you saw this at night?