/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>thread in auto-sage
Not fair, Chinabros!

"Ooh..." The redhead on the ground moaned. "It's unfair to hide behind doors..." Her voice was different. Yes, I thought I knew what was happening here. Curiously, I crouched down and tapped the figure, who cracked an eye open. "Um, hello..." She mumbled. Yamame blankly repeated Kisami's name. "Ki...who?"

"Oh no! She's lost her memory!" Yamame cried. I frowned at her, then shook my head, before turning back to the figure on the ground who was definitely not Kisami. I extended a hand toward her and a moment later, she took hold and allowed me to pull her to her feet. "Oh, wait..." Yamame paused, frowning heavily.

Hong Meiling rubbed her forehead and breathed out heavily. "Um, it would be nice if you could remember my name. It's Hong Meiling, not...Ki." I nodded and apologised for hitting her. "Ah, it's my fault. I wasn't paying attention, and I really should have been. But, er...Please try and keep an eye out for this sort of thing in the future..." I'd try my best, I replied. Curious, I asked the gatekeeper of the Vampire's Mansion what she was doing here. "W-Well, um..." She looked from side to side. "You won't tell Miss Sakuya, will you?" I didn't think I was in the habit of telling Sakuya Izayoi anything in general. She'd been, at most, a little endearing in a comical sort of way at the party, but she had still tried to murder me there, and I still didn't really like her, so I just shook my head. "Well, um...I got a little bit sick." I nodded, but she didn't continue.

After a moment, I thought about it. What sickness could a youkai even get? I didn't think they could get regular sicknesses like humans could. At least, not unless Yamame was specifically engineering one for them. "The doctor says that it'll be fine, I just needed some medicine..." She trailed off, frowning. "Wait, you said...Ki?" She looked at Yamame, who nodded. "Like - Like Kisami? Kisami Kurodani? Wait, you're...Oh! You're her sister, aren't you?" Meiling pointed a finger at Yamame, who nodded slowly. "Ah...Er, sorry, don't worry about that. She was that girl who looked like - Like..." She trailed off, so I awkwardly told her that it was okay if she didn't want to talk about it. "No, it's fine. Her hair was lighter, anyway." I didn't think she was taking about Kisami there.

I suddenly had a thought, and asked Meiling if she'd ever spoken to Miss Yuuka Kazami. "The...Flower youkai? Um, once or twice, I guess? That was a long time ago, though. She doesn't really leave the Garden of the Sun very much these days. Why?" I just wondered if they'd ever gotten along as fellow gardeners. "Er, we got on okay? I think we had different ideas on how to do things." Oh, I thought. That was a little disappointing. I'd hoped that they would make friends, but I supposed that I was very optimistic about that sort of thing, something overly so. "Is that...A problem?" No, I shook my head. "She was a bit too intense for me." Meiling said. I got the feeling that she was trying to make me feel better by over-explaining now, so I raised my hands and told her that it was really okay. Meiling rubbed her forehead and winced slightly, but nodded eventually.

"A-Anyway, I'd best be going. The mansion won't guard itself, after all." She nodded and I shifted to the side slightly so she could get through, then apologized for hitting her again. "Yeah, um, just take care next time, I guess. Though..." And here, she looked at me with much more piercing eyes, and I suddenly remembered the aura she'd had on my first visits to the mansion. Something much more deadly, like the edge of a well-honed blade. "It won't happen again." She told me seriously. I believed her completely.

And then, with a weak smile and a nod, she took off through the bamboo.

"She looks really similar to Ki. It's so weird." Yamame mumbled as we watched her leave. "I wonder how she got sick?" Probably overworked by Sakuya, I muttered darkly, before shaking my head and telling Yamame to ignore that bit. "You really don't like her, do you?" I didn't like her attitude, I replied. It rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't think it was the sort of thing that I could ever get used to.

"Me neither. She's always so cold to us." Reisen Udongein Inaba listlessly commented. This made me jump and Yamame cling onto the nearest thing in sight, which was me. So, with my spider wrapping both her arms and legs around my chest and neck respectively - She managed to keep the spider legs from appearing, which was something, I supposed - I asked the rabbit in a very shaky voice how long she had been there. "I've been here the whole time." She replied bluntly.

>>45645247
>in loving memory of
>immediately block meiling's portrait behind everyone else
how could you do this to her?

"Please don't leave big sis!" Lyrica was clinging to Meiling
"Come on, i said i would see visit you" Meiling was already feeling the tears well up when she was preparing to leave that morning and Lyrica was really wearing out her resistance "and you can come visit me too you know, it's not like i'm going to be gone forever or something" she started patting Lyrica's head
Lunasa approached to gently pull lyrica away "please forgive her, she's not good with goodbyes"
Neither was Meiling
"Hey before you leave" Raiko presented some tickets to Meiling "those should be good until the end of next year so you have no excuse for not seeing our shows, bring some people with you too will you?"
"Trying to make money off of me Raiko?" Meiling Raised an eyebrow
Raiko just smiled and did finger guns at her
"Uh, big sis" Merlin approached "i made this for you" she presented a green and yellow scarf to her
D-don't cry Meiling "Thank you so much Merlin, this is gonna be great for the upcoming winter!" She ruffled Merlin hair
"It's gonna be lonely without you..." Lunasa commented
And just before she could reply the four girls embraced her in a group hug
N-no this isn't fair, this is
...UuUuUuUu...
And just like that the dam broke and Meiling began crying, soon the Prismrivers would join her
They would spend a couple minutes like this until Meiling finally gathered the strength to leave

I was starting to get the feeling that Hong Meiling had some level of personal dissatisfaction with her job. "-Day in, day out, I just stand there! I'm lucky I even get bathroom breaks! No one's thankful because those Spell Card Rules mean I can't actually fight people off properly, so they think of me as a joke, and even when I'm gardening, they tell me off for not guarding the gate, even though it's part of my job too!" Meiling drained her fourth cup of sake. I'd be worried if she wasn't a youkai. Well, and if it wasn't for the fact that I could see her house from where I was sitting. "I used to be feared! One of the strongest youkai around!" The poor gatekeeper looked about ready to burst into tears, so I patted her on the shoulder and told her that I could sympathize with being thrust into strange situations where nothing I knew mattered anymore. It wasn't quite the same, but I hoped that it was similar enough.

Meiling had dragged me into the conversation almost immediately after we'd sat down, and she'd yet to released me, but I could feel her passion for what she was talking about, so I was willing to sit and listen. Next to me, Kagerou had drawn Yamame into a conversation about sewing, or clothes, or something of that nature. I couldn't quite tell because every time I tried to hear a bit of their conversation, Meiling would bring me back to listening to her by starting on some new tirade. "-And Lady Patchouli just rearranged the entire flowerbed, then left me to deal with it! That nosy crow tengu journalist was here asking me questions about it for ages! Lady Patchouli only bothered revealing the truth later, after I'd already had my skills in gardening called into question." Well, that did sound very much like Aya Shameimaru, I couldn’t deny. I remarked that that same journalist was currently chasing after me for an interview, though I hadn't seen her in almost two weeks. Perhaps she'd forgotten about it. "She's so mean! She accused me of sneaking off for a nap so someone could put a crop circle in the flowerbeds, and then Lady Patchouli showed up and revealed that she had done it as an experiment without telling me! I was out there losing sleep every night because I didn't know how to change it back!" Meiling's eyes - a bright, piercing blue - seemed to be welling up with tears. I slowly asked her if she wanted a hug, and then found myself almost thrown backwards when she launched forward and wrapped her arms around me and started bawling.

"She gets like this, sorry." I heard a voice say, and I looked over to the side while awkwardly patting her back. "She's something of an emotional drunk." There was Wakasagihime, floating in the water and leaning against the white rock that she was using as a table. "I probably should have warned you, Mr. Human. Usually we try and keep her away from too much sake, but when you and Miss Yamame arrived, she drank a bit too much." Wakasagihime smiled sympathetically. "It's usually Kagerou that she's hugging and crying at." I looked over at the wolf in question, who was excitedly showing her hood to Yamame and asking her if she could repair it. It did look a little ragged, I supposed, and Yamame seemed to be far more in her element now that the conversation was about clothing, sewing, and repairing.

I looked back down at Meiling, who'd quietened down, so I gently pushed her off of me and told her that she was a great gardener, as I had seen the flowers in the mansion's courtyards at the height of summer when I'd been to see Lady Patchouli myself. "You think so...?" She asked quietly, and I smiled and nodded, which then set her off again. “My sister used to say that…” She mumbled. After a few more minutes, I realised that she'd stopped making noise, so I looked down and found that she'd fallen asleep with her head pressed against my arm.

"And there she goes." I heard Kagerou say, and I turned my head awkwardly to see that she and Yamame were watching me with some amusement. "It's like a really bright candle. Burns twice as fast." She got up, came over, and helped me lay the poor, drunken gatekeeper down. "She's been coming along to the meetings for a little bit - I think she heard Hime and I drunkenly singing once and decided to check out what was going on, only to end up joining in." Kagerou frowned. "...At least, I think that's what happened. I don't really remember. All I do remember is the nightmarish hangover the next day." That was an unfortunately familiar story, even if it hadn't particularly happened to me. Reimu and Yamame had both experienced a bit of a battering by the oni alcohol that Lady Kasen kept in her senkai, and I'd been surprised that they remembered as much as they had anyway.

>>45043356
>"But what about the gate, Miss Sakuya?" Meiling asked.
>Miss Sakuya, who had turned away, looked over her shoulder. "We both know that an intruder would get in regardless." And then, she vanished.
wtf sakuya you rude bitch
meiling's trying her best!