/jp/ - Otaku Culture

"A meeting?" Yamame asked me, looking up from her desk in her bedroom. "For what?"

She'd been working on something relentlessly. It had started the day I'd returned from Eientei, worrying about Reimu, and struggling to focus on things. Yamame, continuing to be lovely to me, had been happy to give me as many hugs as I'd needed to stop worrying for a while, and then she'd made me have a nap because I 'still looked like passing out'. When I'd woken up, she'd already been at the desk in her room, a large spread of sheets across the desk. Personally, I wondered whether or not the desk she was using was too small to contain all of the work, so I'd asked her if she wouldn't be better off using the desk in the workshop. "But that's my desk for seamstress stuff." She'd told me, as if it was the plainest thing in the world. "You have to compartmentalize these things. Otherwise, you feel like you're never at ease when you're at that desk, and it gets hard to keep what material is for what project in mind." I blankly stared at her, then nodded. "See? I knew you'd understand." She smiled in that self-satisfied way that I loved, so I had stood up and walked straight to her desk, crouched down, and kissed her until she couldn't remember where she lived, let alone which desk was for what project.

It had been three days since then, and she was still working. She'd explained what she was doing for me at least twice, and I still couldn't really say that I understood it. It was apparently some sort of preliminary work for a new project that Yamame and her family would be starting up after the Hot Spring Town restoration was finished, though I wondered if they weren't jumping ahead a little, since it seemed like Suika crashing through the keystone had led to a lot of arguing and as a result, had slowed the project down even further. The previous day, after another excruciating clothes fitting session, and a less excruciating reversal where Yamame had modelled several outfits herself, Reiko had arrived at Yamame's house to complain for several hours about the project, the amount it had slowed down by, and how much money she wanted to charge for it. The complaining session had gone on long enough that I'd ended up just making dinner for Reiko as well. She'd been singing my praises on the way out, though, so I could imagine worse fates.

Either way, I'd finally decided to broach the subject of the Grassroots Youkai Network with Yamame, after taking a few days to think about it. I was being careful about it, because I knew that if I approached it the wrong way, Yamame was likely to refuse and swear up and down that she had too much work to even think about going to a meeting for socializing. In the end, I'd began by saying that I'd heard about a meeting. Thus, leading to the current situation. "Or, uh, about what?" Yamame asked, looking back to her desk. She'd piled it up with sketches and sketches, which she was moving around randomly. "Wait, you heard about this in the human village?" I nodded, then told her that while I'd been with Tenshi, Marisa and Reimu, I'd heard about it from a youkai wolf who'd lost a bet and had to work at the café. "A youk- What?" Yamame turned to me properly, now frowning. "There was a youkai wolf in the village? Working? Because she - she lost a bet?" I hadn't really thought about how ridiculous it sounded, but yes, that was the case. "That's...Huh. Okay..." She scratched at her head, and I had to force down the desire to play with her hair. "So...What's this meeting she told you about?" I explained that it was supposedly a small gathering of friendlier youkai, who just wanted to live comfortably. I couldn't explain that it was mostly youkai who were considered weak, because I had a feeling Yamame wouldn't much enjoy my implication of her weakness, and I didn't really think she was all that weak anyway. Then, I had a stroke of genius, so I mentioned that I'd met one of the youkai who'd be there before. A freshwater mermaid, known as Wakasagihime. "Oh, I think I've heard of her." Yamame said, turning her chair around to face me, sitting on the edge of the bed. "She lives in the lake, right? The one by the Scarlet Devil Mansion?" I nodded. I'd met her just after the storm, when I'd been feeling cooped up and needed some time alone - a plan that had immediately fallen apart because I'd not actually had any alone time. "Was she nice?" She was very nice, I said. Gentle and polite, and she'd been easy to talk to.