/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45775434
Kasen is a very nice hermit that doesn't have any temptations. I even went to her house yesterday and she didn't do anything bad to me, we just had a nice chat over tea, she even let me pet some of her animals. You anons should be ashamed of your actions! Her arm though...

"She wants...A party?" Yuugi slowly asked me, her eyebrows raising. "Here? In the Hot Springs Town?" I nodded slowly and tentatively. "Is she...okay? In the head? Does she know what she's getting herself into?" I was fairly sure that she was okay in the head, but I didn't know what she was getting into, which I supposed was part of why I was here. "Look, oni don't exactly need an excuse to throw a party, and if they hear that there's one happening...Well, we'll definitely want to join in."

I hadn't seen an oni party, but I had seen an oni throw another oni directly through a wall on my first visit to the Old City, so I imagined that it would be something like that. "Look, I've not got a problem with paying some of the money for this whole project in the form of a party, but..." I had an idea of what the problem was. "Aren't a lot of those spiders of yours...Young?" I shrugged and said that they were at the very least excellent at taking care of each other, so I wondered if it would be possible to limit the number of oni who showed up. "Hmm..." Yuugi pinched her brow and closed her eyes in thought. "There's a particularly big hall just a ways up from the springs. It's near the area of the town that the Kurodani have been staying in, so there might be less oni over there." I figured that Yura and Reiko - Well, Reiko once she'd finished beating Yura up - would already have found that exact place. "Are they planning it for..." As soon as possible, I imagined. "Ah. Well, this'll be a busy day. If I get Suika and the two Ibaraki's..." Yuugi trailed off, clearly thinking about it. "Okay, yeah, that should keep a lot of them away."

I opened my mouth, but was interrupted when the door behind me slammed open. "Yuugi!" A drunken and sadly recognizable voice shouted. "I've been looking for you for-" I turned my head, hoping that it wasn't- "Hey~" Raki greeted me, sounding very drunk and looking more than a little...Something other than drunk. Suddenly, I felt like I was in dangerous territory.

"Raki." Yuugi said with a slight grin. "What's up? Where's your better half?" Raki stumbled forward from the door she had been leaning on and swiped up the sake bottle that had been sitting on the table. "Enjoying yourself?" Yuugi had a very deadpan look on her face as Raki drained the entire bottle in one go.

"Ah..." Raki sighed happily as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "She's, uh..." Having trailed off, Raki frowned. "Dunno." She eventually settled on. "She'll show up...Probably. "She'd started to reach the level that she'd been at in the hot springs, which had concerning implications. "She'll turn up, probably. Now, you're supposed to be drinking until you pass out with me! What are you doing up here!?" Yuugi pointed a finger at me. "Oh...Oh!" Raki's eyes were hazy and seemed like they were shifting in and out of focus. "Hmm..." She hummed, rubbing her chin and staring at me. "Hey, I just remembered something." Without a moment's pause, she stepped right in front of me, then crouched down and got very close and personal. "Remember our talk at the hot springs~?" She asked me. I could smell the sweetness of the alcohol on her breath, as well as the smell of the soaps that the hot springs had for cleaning yourself with. Now that I thought about it, her hair did look wet, too.

I was starting to think that I only noticed these sorts of details when something weird was happening to me. "H-Hey!" Yuugi cried. Just remembering who was in front of me, I threw my head to the side right as Raki's head turned, just barely avoiding one of her horns spearing me in the brain. "You - You can't just do - do that sort of stuff in someone else's house!" Yuugi was starting to go red and fidget, and I was trying to shuffle back from Raki before she could do something else. I really hoped that Lady Kasen was somewhere nearby, because I didn't see anyone else having much hope of reigning her in. "S-Stop, um, Raki." Yuugi didn't look like she was going to be much help, so I continued trying to shuffle back.

"I'm trying to help you, Yuugi!" Raki cried, waving her hands around. Her chain cleaved through the air right where my head had just been and I breathed a sigh of relief as it missed. "You'll never get a man if-"

"I don't need your help!" Yuugi cried, burying her head in her hands. "You just like to make fun of me for-"

I had no expectations of Yamame, but I did have hopes. High hopes for her and Lady Kasen to get along. I didn't want them to fight, because I didn't want to have to choose between them both. It was out of my hands, though, so I could do nothing more than step into the male changing rooms and pray for Yamame's success.

The changing rooms were empty and quiet, but I was pleased to see that they were fully equipped, and not just for someone the size of an oni. I'd been slightly worried about that, but it seemed that since the Hot Springs Town had become something a tourist destination for plenty of youkai, the staff catered to all sizes of youkai. What this meant was that there were towels that actually fit me properly, since I'd been half-expecting to see massive towels meant for oni men twice my height and width in muscles, that I could get lost for three days within.

I washed up quickly and found that I was rather in need of a wash after trekking up and down the mountain in the last two days, as well as wandering around the Hot Springs Town, where it was steamy and hot. Thankfully, the venue provided plenty of supplies for cleaning myself up, and it was fairly short work to get myself ready to enter the hot springs proper. I wiped my hair out of my eyes, then stored my clothes in a waiting locker before stepping through the doorway to the hot springs proper.

It made sense why this in particular was a more private house. The doorway led out onto the edge of the springs itself, which had little space to walk around. The springs were rather large, with enough space that even a couple oni would be able to stretch out their bodies fully inside. The floor, I noticed, looked like it had been carved straight from the rock that the whole place was built on top of, presumably to keep the feel of being in a regular hot spring. The hot spring itself ran to the edge of the balcony, where a railing prevented customers from falling off. And beyond the railing was an amazing view over all of the Hot Spring Town. I could see the giant keystone in the distance, still lodged in the largest of the hot springs, and I could see the twisting and turning paths that led all the way up to the quieter district that I was currently in, where there weren't a huge amount of people milling about. Even so, I could hear the sound of the visitors in the distance, in both shouts, drunken cheers, and even more drunken singing. I could see the sheer rock face on the opposite side of the town, and I wondered how long it would be before the oni began to cut into it to expand the district out further. And just to the edge of the balcony, I could see an even larger cavern, where the Old City itself lay.

However, it seemed that I had things closer to home to worry about, because I was not alone. Sitting at the edge of the spring, her towel dangerously low at her chest and riding up where she had her leg resting against the edge of the water, was Raki. With one leg in the water, she held Lady Kasen's sake box - Though I supposed it was her sake box too - delicately between two clawed fingers, and she looked entirely unperturbed when she spotted me. She drained her box, stared at me, and bit gently at the fingernail of her thumb.

Slowly, I asked her if this was the mixed hot spring. "It is." She said, her eyes narrowing. "For warming up your body and relaxing." She continued, her voice somehow sounding dangerous. I wondered if she was in a bad mood. "Get in." She finally told me. I found myself slow to move, and Raki stood, her towel seeming to stay on by either a miracle or prayers. She waded across the water toward me and crossed her arms. "Sit down." She repeated, her voice gaining an edge sharper than a knife. When I still didn't immediately move, she ripped my towel from me and threw it in the corner of the room, leaving me entirely naked. Without thinking, I stepped into the water, ignored the heat of it, and sat in an attempt to preserve some modesty. "You don't let your towel touch the water." Raki told me, then she turned and threw her own towel into the opposite corner, leaving her just as naked as I was. "Basic etiquette." She sat in the water, taking the exact same pose she had been in beforehand. I forced my eyes up at the ceiling. Despite the awkward situation, the water was incredibly warm and soothing, even if I now had a dangerous oni sat opposite me completely nude.

"Give or take." Suika replied, scratching at her neck. "So, you're the arm, huh? I'd only seen the hermit around Gensokyo." The arm was close, so close to being Ibaraki-douji herself, but she just wasn't quite there. "You look..."

"Like her?" The arm asked back. "Not quite, though. I'm still struggling to get used to it. Not many mirrors in Avici." At that point, the arm took notice of Yuugi, who was watching the exchange with her arms crossed. "Yuugi Hoshiguma!" The arm called, a toothy smile on her face. "It's been just as long since I've seen you!" She approached her, then, fast as a tengu, struck out with a fist. With a great burst of air, the tallest oni had caught the arm's fist in her free hand. "You haven't aged a day."

"And neither have you, Almost-Ibaraki." Yuugi replied with a slight grin. She released the arm's hand and sent it stumbling backward. "Though you're certainly not quite the oni I once knew. Where's your other half?" At that, the arm's mood quickly turned sour. "Oh-ho. Would you look at that, Shuuten-douji? I seem to have struck a sore spot." Suika looked up at hearing her past name, then at the arm.

"We're not talking." The arm muttered. "It's rather hard to move past getting betrayed by your own self. She's moping somewhere inside." Without thinking about it, Suika snorted. The arm shot a sharp look at her. "Something funny, Shu- No, it's Ibuki now, isn't it?" She paused for a moment, and somehow, Suika just knew what she was about to say. "Where's-"

"Not here. Not gonna be here. Moving on." Suika almost growled. She squeezed her eyes shut, then shook her head. "Ibuki, yeah. Sure is." Suika said, still pushing past the laughter she'd almost gotten caught in. "Sorry. Just sounded like a married couple." The arm's eyes narrowed for a moment, then she shook her head. More than anything, that sobered Suika up just a little. She wasn't Ibaraki-douji. Could be, maybe. Had the potential to be. But Ibaraki-douji would have cracked a smile at the mention of weddings, or laughed, or gotten sad, or cried because she was remembering some particular wedding she'd seen, or something. She would have been more emotional. "That's what we're here for, anyway!" She clapped the arm on the back, which she was happy to see didn't make her stumble at all. "Sorting out you and your other half's issues. Not much of an oni task, but hey, someone's gotta do it! So, we're gonna go and see the hermit, and we'll go from there, alright?"

The arm held her stiff pose for a moment, then sighed and relaxed. "Whatever. Sure." She shrugged. "Guess I've got to talk to her eventually."

"That's the spirit!" Suika cheered, then spun around and began dragging Yuugi away by the shirt. "Just you wait, we'll have you two thick as thieves in no time!" The arm nodded slowly, then turned back to the scenery in the other direction. "What do you think?" She whispered to Yuugi once they were out of earshot.

>>44580527
Maybe, but she also is the best oni too.