/jp/ - Otaku Culture

My eyes glanced down, focusing on my hands, Kasen-nee’s fleeting chuckle barely reaching my mind consumed by a single thought: outmatched. Maybe forever outmatched. Forever living in the shadow of titans, with an uncertain future—Father in that sick parody of the shrine, his eyes full of sorrow as he pounds my insides—, the binding chains of fate smearing the name of Hakurei all over me, no matter if I wear the clothes of the Moriyan Shrine or Yukari's sick whites… And on top of everything—of this echoing laughter of a dead man and Yuuka’s words, demons dancing inside her eyes—inside my head I still hear the rustling of chains.

Stagnation, Yuuka had explained to me, demons dancing in her eyes: never able to move away from these shadows and… Become something more. But I-I don't want to be something more than Hana Hakurei! Trying to change the core, to shift things haphazardly and expect the result to be recognizable—the village is unrecognizable! Sensei, Mother!

… I don't want that…

It feels like falling eternally.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” My eyes flutter up, her voice laden with life—a painful juxtaposition with the dried-up blood covering her horns and hair. “… That such a powerful being would choose to return to me. What did he see in me? Was it nostalgia or an i-instinctive need that arose when I… when I watched him hatch from that egg?” Falling into a deep, dark hole with no way to climb out of it. “Or was it something else entirely? Duty—maybe… pity?” She lifts her bandaged arm, staring at it, my eyes unable to see her features. “Pity of everything I have lost along the ages and what I’ve become?” Her arm falls and, slowly, Kasen-nee turns to me. I can’t bear to look her in the eyes. “I saw you were looking at my broken horns. Sorry for this display…” A pause, and I nod, heart frozen and still falling. “I’m an Oni; one of the great fi—four of Youkai Mountain. I fought someone in the past and, in a stroke of luck, had my arm cut off and, with it, my Oni self. That day, I felt enlightened and thought that all bad, all evil of me was gone forever.” W-What… What is she doing? Trembling, I lift my eyes to meet hers. They’re overflowing with nauseating nostalgia. Terrible memories. “The seal broke a few decades ago, and when it did, I fought your mother. I almost killed her…” A moment of silence, her eyes flickering to the entrance of her Senkai, but nothing else. T-They are almost here… “Yet she saved me and repaired the seal, though it wasn’t a perfect craft.” She tries to study me, but a blush stops her. “But already knew all of that. Okina told you and Reimu-san, and… She told you how the weakness of this seal materializes, didn’t she?”

The lust. The uncontrollable lust that got her enslaved by Yukari.

There is no answer, and Kasen-nee’s eyes glow with understanding, but not surprise—those words when I got here… The consuming darkness grew unwieldy. It’s too much. “Sorry… I-I’m so s-sorry, Kasen-nee, I…” Body trembling, heart clenching, mind conscious of every torn hole in these new clothes and her efforts to avert her gaze. Everything I touch, I destroy. “I-I took part in your pain—I-I didn’t know, I’m so sorry—and… I was so stupid! I should’ve known something was up—that Yukari had set me up!” Tone raising, chest pounding, and, before I knew it, my forehead hit the dirt, my body prostrated. “I AM SORRY, PLEASE! I’M SO SORRY! I—DAD! I RAPED YOU, I RAPED MY D-DAD!” WHY?! H-How?! The words just left me before I understood them! W-Why did they… A maelstrom rippling inside my mind, no answer springing up despite how much I sought it; all the while I kept babbling, mouth a maniacal worm, squirming and wriggling amidst small tears.

Yet, it feels… right.

“Y-Yukari h-holds so much power above me; she made me do terrible things t-to Father, to myself—things I knew I’d regret doing afterwards, and she filled my head with lies—b-but… It was always me doing them! I always knew what she wanted me to! What I was doing! I-I…” Her eyes grow large and confused. In her lush pink, I see Father’s tears; I see that perverted tengu’s eyes full of horror; I see myself longing for Yukari’s warmth, and I see myself kneeling with my tongue inside her femininity.

I see myself at the birthday party, naked and horrified—and, deep down, aroused.

“… I wanted what I got from her. I wanted love, I wanted sin—and she gave me everything.” I see myself in her tight embrace, and I see myself drowning in her. Father and Mother, holding that bakeneko, walk away; others try to shield me from the truth with their unconditional love and support—Marisa-sensei; Yuuka-san; Suwako-sama and Sanae-san—, but here and now, in this hell draped in beautiful spring, seeing the consequence of my actions, it becomes all too clear: “I am no victim…”

Barely a whisper.

Yet loud enough to tear the walls down.

The worldlines collapse into one another, showing me a non-Euclidean world—

—A way to run away from my responsibilities; of what I have done.