/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I squinted. Ki looked like she'd sustained some damage to her clothes - Still the suit that she'd been wearing during the party. They looked slightly torn. "Oi!" She shouted. "Kasen! Raki! Kisami! In here!" Waving them over, she stepped back inside her room and immediately headed to the kitchen to prepare more tea.
I waited at the door. Lady Kasen got there first. "It's good to see you again." She said warmly. "It seems that we've had a bit of...Well, a houseguest." That seemed to be happening at her dojo a lot lately. I'd thought she wanted to keep herself discrete. "Yes, well...These things have a habit of happening all at once, don't they?" I supposed that was true enough. "Reimu?" Lady Kasen nodded at me, then stepped into Reimu's room. "You've got to clean those steps better!" She called, moving in deeper.

"Hey." Raki said, stopping next to me. "Snow's coming down pretty heavy, huh? It was far windier when we were leaving the mountain, though." Yeah, I replied. It had been pretty bad here, as well, though it had been sorted out. "A tengu, right? I saw one making a beeline for the tengu city as we were heading over. Fast as all hell. Is that what the tengu are like these days?" I couldn't exactly compare it to the past, I replied with a frown. "Oh, right. It was that girl who was at the party. With the black hair." I nodded. That sounded like Shameimaru. "She definitely had the mood for a tengu. They're always so uppity." They did seem to give a bit of an impression, I thought, though Iizunamaru from the tengu city hadn't been all that bad. Her fox, though...

Kisami stepped up to me, shivering all the while, and Raki decided to move into the Shrine. "H-Hi." Ki mumbled, her teeth chattering badly. "R-Really C-Cold..." I decided that the easiest way to deal with this was to take my coat off and wrap it around her shoulders. "O-Oh, er, Th-Thank you..." She wrapped it tighter around herself. Curious, I asked her what had happened to her clothes. Those holes definitely couldn't be helping against the cold. "K-Koutei..." She finally mumbled, with something like a deadened stare. I took pity on her and wrapped my arms around her as I guided her inside and sat her down at the kotatsu. Once she'd warmed up slightly, she tried again. "He was...Gentle, I guess. I mean, as gentle as a massive dragon can be, but it's only the clothes that suffered. I'll beg Yams to fix them up later." She paused. "Oh, I haven't greeted you yet." And she threw her arms around me. "I was definitely going to go home, right, but then it got later and later, and I thought I'd just go tomorrow, but before I could, Lady Kasen dragged me into her morning training!" Oh, I'd done that. It was brutal at first. "Brutal! That barely describes it!" You got used to it, I said with a shrug. "I don't think I want to..." That haunted look crossed her eyes again.

"She did quite a good job, I thought." Raki commented, sitting down by the kotatsu and chomping down on a rice cracker. "I hear the Shrine Maiden was the biggest whiner that my partner had ever seen. Miss Kurodani here, meanwhile, barely complained. That's respectable to an oni."

"W-Well, I do know what oni are like..." Kisami replied, blushing slightly. "So, I decided that I should do the same sort of thing."

"Hey, shut it, stupid arm." Reimu stepped back into the room and rebuked Raki, who simply raised an eyebrow. She was holding a tray with a lot of cups on it. "You didn't get kidnapped by a dragon like-" She stopped, clearly having heard Kisami and I talking. Ki had done the exact same, and apparently hadn't complained. "...Like me, and you didn't also have to deal with loads of weird lessons in things you've never heard of, like-" And that one, in fact, had happened to me. "Well, it - It was really hard, okay?" I took pity on her and agreed.

"It was hard, Reimu, especially for someone who coasts by on talent like you do." Lady Kasen agreed, finally joining us. She sat right next to Raki, who looked over at her for a moment. "Your brother here, and Miss Kisami, were more used to putting a lot of effort into something." Lady Kasen looked between us all. "Well, Reimu, how do you feel about Spring weddings? Oh, and peach trees?"

"Uh...Fine?" Reimu replied confusedly.

"What about the Garden of the Sun? Yuuka Kazami?" Lady Kasen seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. Reimu balked a little at the last name.

"She's a bit of a tease." She finally muttered. "Oh, don't tell me you're going to have the wedding there? Wait, why are you asking me about peach trees, then?" I shrugged and said that the peach pit I'd given to Miss Yuuka had grown into a massive tree. "Oh." A moment later... "Wait, what?"

So, we got to catching Reimu up on what we'd spoken about on New Year's Day.

I considered it a testament to how much the arm of Ibaraki-douji had changed as I watched Reimu boss both her and Lady Kasen around as preparations for the party shot into overdrive. I couldn't imagine the oni who'd been described to me readily agreeing when Reimu yelled from the kitchen for her to go and light the candles on all of the lanterns leading toward the Shrine from the village. I was stuck shovelling the courtyard and hoping that the ache in my back wasn't permanent, but that did mean I got to hear Reimu's stress spill over and listen as she ordered Lady Kasen out of the kitchen to help me, which was nice. "Consider this," She said, patting me on the shoulder, "As training, since you never managed to come up and visit me." I tried protesting and saying that I'd been busy, but the teasing glint in her eye let me know that she'd been joking as her bandaged hand shot over to the other side of the Shrine and picked up a second shovel.

The shovelling took a lot of energy, and once we were finished, even Lady Kasen looked a little bit out of breath. Together, we both staggered back to the veranda and fell against the wall, panting and trying to get some air in our lungs. Fortunately, Reimu was busy cooking four things at once, so she didn't have the time to come out and yell at us to do anything more. Personally, I thought that things looked prepared, anyway. It seemed like Reimu was just stressing for the sake of it, and I wasn't sure if trying to go and talk to her would get me a knife, needle or gohei thrown at my head...Or worse. I decided that she was probably doing fine, so I just let my head rest against the wall of the Shrine. "Phew..." I heard another panting voice say, and I looked up to see Raki staggering across the courtyard. She collapsed onto the veranda, breathing even harder than Lady Kasen and I were. After a moment, she tried to get up, only to fall back against my shoulder. Almost immediately, her body relaxed, and I could tell that she'd fallen asleep. A moment after that, I felt her unconsciously wrap her hands around my arm and snuggle closer, and I resigned myself to not being able to move any time soon. It was...Just slightly adorable. Another plus was that she was too close to accidentally stab me with her horns if she turned her head.

"Ah..." Lady Kasen murmured. "I was wondering when she'd pass out." Carefully turning my head so I wouldn't wake the sleeping oni, I asked her what she meant. "Well, I think..." She trailed off, looking around, then shifted slightly closer so she could whisper to me. "Don't tell anyone?" I nodded immediately. "Even Yamame, if you wouldn't mind. It's not that I don't trust her, but it isn't my news to spread like wildfire." Slightly less immediate, but I nodded again. I could handle keeping this a secret, if it was important to Lady Kasen and Raki. "Thank you. She's...been having nightmares. It only started recently, about when we came back from Former Hell." I looked down at Raki, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully at the moment. "She won't tell me what she's having nightmares about, but...Well, we're still one and the same. I know what it probably is."

Lady Kasen moved around to Raki's other side. She'd fallen asleep sitting against me and with her legs sticking out across the veranda. I didn't expect that Lady Kasen would tell me what the nightmares were about, so instead, I asked her how Raki was doing in general. "She's not been sleeping very much." Lady Kasen told me with an intense frown. "Denies it if I ask, but she's exhausted. That's why she's crashed just now. “Lady Kasen reached over and very gently brushed a few strands of hair from Raki's face. "I guess...It's progress, in a way. She's doing so much better in terms of fighting her instincts now. I just wish it didn't have to come at the cost of her own well-being. I've been trying to get her to sleep more, but..." But what? I was starting to wonder what could make an oni like Raki feel uncomfortable enough to have nightmares. "I think..." Lady Kasen lowered her voice even further. "I think because she spent so long sealed in the darkness of Avici, she, um, doesn't like sleeping alone." Lady Kasen mumbled, looking rather guilty about it. "I guess that's my fault, huh? I left her sealed away again." I shook my head. From what I'd learnt, Lady Kasen had been looking for her arm for a long time. She'd already beaten herself up enough about the period after Reimu and Tenshi had fought her in Former Hell, when she'd sealed Raki again, but she had no business beating herself up about the time before that. Lady Kasen watched me silently for a moment before smiling. "I've been a bad influence on you, I think. I'm supposed to lecture you, not the other way around." That got me to laugh a little.