/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>46736332
Not like Reimu is any different

In the silence following Yuuma and Chiyari's departure, things began to happen. Because it wasn't just that door in the hallway. No, I felt something deep in my chest, and I could hear a sort of ringing in my ears. The wall, right there. There was a mark on it. A little scratch, something that shouldn't have been worth noticing. But...Below it, there was another, and another below that, all in the same position horizontally but at different heights vertically. Without thinking, I stepped over to it, my fingers brushing weakly against the wall. The marks only went up a short distance, barely anything compared to where I stood now. Because - Because I remembered. "We'll keep track of your height as you grow. Then, you'll be able to look back on it and see how far you've come." He'd said. My - My father. And the lines only went so high because he'd no longer been around after that.

"Is - Is that...?" I swallowed and nodded, turning to Yamame. My height chart, or what little of it we'd managed back then. She joined me at the wall and took my hand tightly. "So you were that small once..." I had been. I'd been that small when I'd seen them - Shakily, I took in a deep breath. "We should mark where you are now." Yamame said. I was completely against it. It wasn't - It wasn't my chart, not in that sense. It was where my father had marked my height. Not me. I couldn't put new marks on his work.

"We should." Reimu murmured, now standing next to me. "It's your father's work, right? Wouldn't marking where you are now be like a new connection to him? Continuing what he left off?" She withdrew a needle from her sleeve. "It's like...Sending a message to him. You're saying, 'look how far I've come, father.' even if he's not here anymore." I looked at her for a moment. "O-Or something. Look, I never had a father. Is that how you talk to one? I mean, I talked to Genji and all, but he hasn't spoken in years, so..."

I felt the weakest of smiles tugging at my lips. I supposed it was a bit formal, I finally said to Reimu. But maybe, just maybe, she had a point. Ever since Reimu had broached the topic of returning to my house, I'd been thinking. Not just about my fears, and how we were to deal with Chiyari and Yuuma, but what I would say to my parents if they were around. Would they be proud of me? Horrified that I was marrying a youkai, the very thing that took their lives? Would they want to understand? And what about Eientei? Or the peach, or any of the things that had happened to me? And in the end, I'd come up with nothing. I just didn't know how they would have responded, because I didn't really know them well enough to say.

"Hey, look at me." Reimu suddenly said, making me turn in her direction. "We're fine." She told me sharply. "If you don't want to do it, you don't have to." After a moment, I shook my head. I did want to do it. I might have not known them as well as I wished, but all I could do was honour what little I did remember, and I would believe that they would have been proud. "Alright. Shoes off." I nodded and kicked my boots off, then had a surreal sort of deja vu because it had been so long since I'd kicked my boots off in this house. Obligingly, I stood against the wall, and both Reimu and Yamame floated up slightly in order to properly gauge my height. "Up slightly..." Reimu muttered.
"No, that's - You probably do it off of the top of the skull, right? Not the hair? You've gone too high." Yamame replied quietly, and I felt her smooth my hair down flat. "There, like that…Oh, actually, you probably shouldn’t do your hair like that. Miss Keine said that it doesn’t look good that way." Brilliant, I replied dryly. Glad to Know that Keine hadn’t kept anything back.

"Yeah, but...Isn't it more like how people see you? They see you with your hair properly, not with it flattened down like that.” Reimu lowered the needle for a moment, then raised it again. "So it should be here?" I pointed out that I was fairly sure my father had always marked it to the top of my head and not to my hair. "Oh, did he? Well...I guess we'll have to keep it like that, right? So, it's the same. Alright, you win, Yamame." She lowered the needle so that I could feel it against my head. "Straight? No? How about now? Okay, good." There was a little scratching sound before Reimu touched back down. Yamame followed suit a moment later. "Done." She told me. I stepped away from the wall and turned. There it was. the new mark that Reimu had made in the wall, so much higher than all the previous ones. It was good, I thought, but it was also a reminder of the time in-between. The period that would always be unfinished. "There you go. You're not growing anymore, so...I suppose you can think of this as..." Finishing his work, I replied quietly. Yes, I supposed it was that. After a moment, I sniffled slightly and asked Reimu and Yamame for a hug.

>>45881720
make her taller