/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Marisa's eyes shot open, and she threw herself upright frantically. With a wild look in her eyes, she looked around, gasping for breath the whole time. Her eyes alighted on me. "You're here! Oh, phew! I just had the most terrifying nightmare about you!" I blinked. Me? "Yeah! You'd just gotten engaged to someone I didn't even introduce you to, so my whole shop ended up being a total dud! Oh, thank goodness it was only a dream...I - I'll introduce you to a girl I met again in the Land Ownership Incident from this Summer! She apparently knew me when I was young! She's got these really neat, uh, bracelets-"

"Marisa." Tenshi quietly spoke. "Yamame's here." The ex-celestial was leaning against the wall right by Marisa's head with her arms crossed and her eyes shut. "And - Be nice. I'll punish you otherwise." Marisa actually did clamp her mouth shut at those words. Just what kind of punishment did she have in mind...?

True to her words, Yamame was here. She'd been very silent since Tenshi had carried Marisa into Reimu's room. Reimu, who had still been curled up underneath a blanket, hadn't bothered to wake up. I supposed that it was actually still quite early in the morning after an exhausting party. I didn't really get tired at the normal rate anymore, Yamame was used to different hours, and Tenshi had an even stronger physique than me. Honestly, Reimu and Marisa were probably the most exhausted here. She was sitting next to Reimu while I sat on Marisa's other side. She was still staring lovingly at the ring, and blinking quite rapidly every few moments, like she was struggling to believe it was really there. I felt similar, but in my case, I couldn't believe I'd managed to get the proposal done at all without something getting in the way. Of course, things had gotten in the way both before and after, but I thought that the proposal itself had gone rather well overall.

Marisa turned to look at Yamame, squinting very hard. "So - So, you're..." She looked over at me, then back to Yamame. "You've been the secret lover? The one he's been seeing?" She sounded very suspicious. "You - For - How long?" She pressed her hands against her temples. "My head..." There was the hangover, probably. "And..." She looked back up, but not at Yamame's face, this time. "...Wow." She mumbled. She was looking at the ring.

After a moment, Yamame actually realised that she was being spoken to and looked up. "Hmm? Oh, um, yes, I suppose that would be me. For...Um, several months? We, er, met in the Summer." That was true, since I'd more or less fallen on her head.

"Wait...Yeah, I - I remember that part." She did? I looked at Marisa blankly. "When you explained how you'd gotten to Satori." She elaborated. Oh, I thought. I had explained that to her and Reimu. In fact, I'd forgotten that I'd even spoken about Yamame during it, though I'd been particularly cagey about our journey out of the Old City. "You never explained that bit to me! You said that you'd encountered Yuugi Hoshiguma on your way out, but you never really explained how you'd gotten past her." I looked over at Yamame helplessly. I didn't really want to make Yuugi's inability to deal with lewd things public. It felt like a bit of a breach of her privacy. Yamame shrugged back, scratching her head. Well - She went to scratch her head, realised that it was the hand that now had her engagement ring on it, then used the other hand instead. Finally, I shrugged and said that I supposed you could consider that to be our first date. Yamame slapped a hand over her mouth before she could giggle. "But - But...That was...That was in the middle of Summer!" Marisa cried, then slapped her hands back over her head and groaned. "So you've been seeing her for...Half a year!?" Huh. I hadn't thought it had been that long. Wow.

"To be fair, I think they had a bit of a setback in late Summer." Tenshi commented. That was definitely true. The whole ordeal with my memories had really made me wonder for a while if we would ever make it through. Fortunately, we'd both proven strong enough to work through it. Both my issues with youkai, and Yamame's dietary needs. "Still need to give that stupid Satori youkai a beating for that." I told Tenshi that she probably shouldn't, but I wasn't planning to stand in her way. I still wasn't particularly convinced that I liked Satori very much, but I supposed that Koishi Komeiji had insisted that we try and get along, so I would try my best. "Anyway, I think that it was...Some time after that big storm in the Summer that they really got serious?"