/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45716580 (4/4)
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Yukari Yakumo, running away…

No.

To let everything I've brought forth, constructed, and maintained for centuries—fighting off atomic devices and the passage of time—, to the whims of Okina, Miko, Kasen, Junko, and the like… Why should I? Why should I let those freaks decide the fate of my conceptions? This land of Gensokyo is my first ever child, however ungrateful, and I'll not let it be twisted by power-hungry mongrels that'd use it for their egotistical motives!

No… I'll hold all the power in Gensokyo and protect it against everything! In this land, a man will never be molested and have his life destroyed by a wolf in human skin again; a child won't grow up alone in hell; a girl won't be eviscerated in the deep dark night; and the circumstances of a horrid power won't take a kind, caring person to suicide…

I'll never let any of that happen again…

I am Gensokyo, and I'll protect it—even against itself.

My eyes, a wall of iron, are on hers; ancient wisdom behind those rose quartzes shows immediate understanding. “Gensokyo wouldn't survive without me; the HSE has already completed its objectives and will be wiped out upon the arrival of spring; I'll kill the wicked hermit and the oni when they have achieved their purposes. I'm this close—” I show her my index and thumb almost touching as an exemplification. “—to getting all I need to restore the beauty of this land! To rid it of all misery! All that stands in my way is a bunch of insects that I'll squash soon enough.” Tears were cleansed, fiery resoluteness consuming my heart and spreading throughout my whole body, centering around my belly, where life, beautiful and latent, grows with the promise of a lifetime. “Yuyuko, I will fight them all; I will win—and, then… I will be happy.”

She remains silent and, as the seconds pass with our eyes on one another's, the day—no, more. Much more—weighs impossibly on my shoulders. I'm pregnant. I'm at last pregnant. So much work for it to happen, so many burdens taken and so many monsters attempting to feed off my accomplishments fended off… “I see.” Gently, she holds my head as if precious and brings it to rest on her vast bosom, and there I close my eyes with a drawn-out sigh. Serenity tastes as sweet as it did a millennium ago, even though the warmth of her fair skin is no longer present. “… That's a lot of work, my friend. Too much for a transient life such as yours.”

Her words are not a scalpel anymore. They're a low weep of sympathy that, in any other voice, would have filled me with wrath. But in hers—a voice I cried out to the heavens to reclaim—coldness engulfed my spirit, one of her hands stroking the skin of my stomach. “If I don't do it, then who will?” I ask, cuddling on her lap, tiredness pulling me to the bottom of the oceans of my mind.

“Someone that didn't suffer as much; with a view of this new millennium and an understanding of this ever-changing world—we're relics of a long-gone and gory past, Yukari, and our time to hold onto power has come and gone. Even a place as far removed from common sense as Gensokyo needs to—must—keep moving forward in order to avoid stagnation and… rot.”

… To live here, to live unburdened…

So much blood. Blood everywhere. Painting every wall and piece of furniture, a lifeless body in my arms, and a thundering rain above.

So much power, yet powerless.

“That day, Yuyuko…” Her eyes thinned, those pearls of salt threatening to return. I stop and place my hand over hers, holding on to the life that is developing inside of me. “… I think I buried two people.”

Silence. Her gentle tears bless my skin as mine did hers so long ago.

Together, we watch the naked and winding Saigyou Ayakashi, incapable of blossoming and forever stuck in death. I close my eyes in trembling arms, letting maybe a day or a millennium of fatigue melt away. Yuyuko's arms don't let go; otherworldly mumblings leave her mouth as fine tears roll down. As the end approaches, mistakes—both old and new—are daubed with an intense, death-red paint that is both apathetic and consuming on this twisted canvas.

However, conflict gives rise to resolution, and a millennium of reflection yields one as unblemished and resilient as a diamond. There's little I, Yuyuko, can do to change the moving pieces. Yukari has sealed a fate either of death or rot and though my prayers lie in an outcome where—gently—her ass is ultimately kicked, I have decided that noninterference has gone too far.

Be what may be, my friend… But your fate will not be your child's fate.

That is what I swear to you.

A power I despise, which I made our final demise.

A warm, celestial light is at my fingertips.

Touching her belly, I sing an old, tender tune to soothe our souls, the light growing and expanding, forming the image of a small tree of light. Blessed by a single shed tear of immortality, the tree returns to being a seedling inside her womb.

I hug Yukari as if to never let her go.

… After this, I never will.