/jp/ - Otaku Culture

The fire continues to burn within our dear writeanon.

>>45401437
Nuh uh

>>45400914
Okuu looks so weird without the solar stone and her arm canon

>>45400914
Previous:
1 >>44121508 >>/data/jp/img/0445/50/1694087896359134.png
2 >>44290289 >>/data/jp/img/0445/50/1694087962441371.png
3 >>44383367
4 >>44437040 (3&4) >>/data/jp/img/0445/50/1694088027969245.png
5 >>44487600
6 >>44550620 (5&6) >>/data/jp/img/0446/22/1694614997949247.png
7 >>44622465 >>/data/jp/img/0447/13/1695377031281683.png
8 >>44713561 >>/data/jp/img/0448/28/1696349152839840.png
9 >>44828419 >>/data/jp/img/0449/36/1697321219911751.png
10 >>44936122
(10 - P1) >>/data/jp/img/0449/36/1698587659569048.png
(10 - P2) >>/data/jp/img/0449/36/1698587725286314.png
11 >>45089529
(11 - P1) >>/data/jp/img/0450/89/1699714714961830.png
(11 - P2) >>/data/jp/img/0450/89/1699714780422589.png
12 >>45217874 >>/data/jp/img/0452/94/1700478578465096.png
13 >>45294792 see picrel.

>>45400646
>370,000 words
wtf this is longer than many books, but it doesn't seem like that much, probably because we read it once every day

>>45404107
To think i would never read this if i was not reading it as the chapters release.

>>45403118
I was more focused on what Yamame is about to do to Orin. Can't imagine it does great things for anon's already difficult relationship with her.

le anon and SA gang at the hot springs

>don't do that anon... you know you shouldn't...

>push that stupid cat into the water! she already hates you! get revenge on her for treating you badly!

Seeing Sanae on the op made me wonder if this party might be a good time for Yamame to finally have that awkward conversation with Kanako

>>45407459
Would be funny if at first Kanako saw them together and though that she got him thanks to her advice.

>>45407471
She shows up after utsuho's latest detonation to sorts some things out, she finds Yamame together with anon and approaches them to gloat about her "wisdom".
Suwako is also there and she knows for a fact that this wasn't Kanako's doing.
Anon doesn't correct her out of fear.
Yamame doesn't correct her out of pity
Suwako doesn't correct her because it's been a while since the last time she got to watch her run her mouth.

>>45407490
it'll all happen post-party, when they're all hungover and trying to stagger home without losing their lunch
>kanako trying to gloat
>parsee trying to attack them
>sanae pestering anon about his t-shirt
>suwako trying to make fun of kanako
>then they finally get to the surface and find the cave entrance buried under three feet of snow

>>45407586
And then after everyone has passed out drunk and anon is the last one standing, Arm-chan rapes him with no one to stop her!

>>45407586
That's pretty much that one doujin where Yuugi, Remilia and Kanako destroy the Moriya shrine.

>>45407586
>>sanae pestering anon about his t-shirt
she wants one but is too embarrassed to ask...

>>45407586
I like the follow-up to that after party when because of the snow trapping the Moriya gang in the underground the shrine has effectively been abandoned and ended up taken over by Remilia who has in turn caused an all-out war between the kappa and the tengu to keep both distracted from what's happened at the shrine and also for her entertainment. Meanwhile she has Patchouli working 24/7 on finding a way of sending Flandre to the moon to launch a daring surprise attack and start a war with the Lunarians. It's too cold out for Reimu to want to leave the shrine and deal with it while she's snowed in. Marisa and Tenshi missed the party and were both lured in by the promise of adventure and plunder joining up with Flan to take part in Remi's planned surprise raid on the Moon. Eientei's residents are concerned how this could play out for them. Ran is practically suicidal at the thought of explaining just what the hell went wrong when Yukari gets back from her hibernation.

>>45407905
How can Remilia leave the house if it's snowing?

>>45407905
Yukari would be more upset that she didn't get invited to the moon raid

>>45404198
I have a month and a half to catch up on :(

Kisami caught us at the door to the hall with her usual assault of Yamame with hugs and kisses, though I imagine that both Yamame and I were surprised when she then turned on me for similar treatment. "Ki!" Yamame cried, trying to pull the redheaded spider away from me. "Can't you control yourself!? He’s not your-"

"C'mon, Yams! He's practically part of the family already!" Kisami insisted while I wiped my face clean. "Unless you think he isn't...?" She narrowed her eyes and stared into Yamame's face until the smaller spider shrunk back slightly and stammered something unintelligible. "Well, my work here is done, anyway. I'm off inside, little sister. Oh, and I need to borrow your boyfriend again, pretty soon."

"B-Borrow?" Yamame stammered in confusion. "For what?" She looked over at me, and I tried to shrug back as naturally as I could. "D'you know?" I slowly shook my head, though I supposed that I did know privately that it was for talking about rings. “Honestly, Ki, what’s with your secrecy nonsense? You know how I feel about this sort of thing.”

"Don't worry yourself." Kisami told Yamame, reaching her hand out. Yamame, seemingly sick of the whole thing, finally managed to get out of the way before Kisami could go for her hair again, and she pouted. "How cruel, Yams. Denying your big sister the chance to ruffle your hair? What am I supposed to do with myself?" She sighed loudly. "Well, I suppose I'll have to find something else to do, rather than embarrassing you. Cruel, cruel, cruel…Take care, my favourite couple in the world." She told us, opting to ruffle my hair instead, despite my protests. Then, she pushed her way inside the hall, leaving Yamame and I stood there.

"Is it just me, or is she getting even more out of control lately?" Yamame muttered, before grabbing me by the wrist and stomping inside, pulling me along with her. "What does she want with you?" I shook my head and said that I wasn't sure. "I hope she's not interested in you...Like that." She grumbled under her breath. I didn't think so, I said as Yamame pulled me past a group of her sisters who were excitedly talking about how much they were planning to drink.

I wondered how old they actually were, but then I supposed that it didn't really matter as long as someone was around to keep them from getting out of control. Then, Yamame pulled me out of the crowd and through a sliding door into an empty hallway with a flight of stairs leading up to somewhere else. And then, Yamame pushed me against the wall and trapped me with her arms. "I said that I didn't want to share." She growled, before pressed herself against me and getting up on her tiptoes to kiss me deeply and roughly. After some amount of time that I thought was probably at least a few years, she broke the kiss and stumbled back, leaving both of us gasping for air. She stared at me and I could tell that she was planning to go in for another round, and she came back toward me-

"Big Sister!" Nai cried from the top of the stairs. Both Yamame and I turned our heads and shouter her name at the exact same moment, then looked back at each other in surprise, before looking back at Nai, who'd jumped and half hidden herself behind the landing. "Ah!" She cried. "I-I'm sorry! I didn't see anything!" She slapped a hand over her eyes, but even at that distance I could tell that she was peeking through her fingers. "It's just - Um, I was told to keep an eye out for you, and - And I-I heard someone come through this door so I..."
She trailed off, and Yamame sighed as she pulled my T-shirt back into alignment, then headed for the stairs, leaving me to get myself under control. "No, I'm sorry, Nai. That was my fault, I shouldn't have done it." Yamame spoke gently as she ascended the stairs and gently pried Nai from the banister at the landing so she could wrap her in an even more gentle hug. After a moment, I followed her up the stairs and awkwardly stood there until Yamame shot me a significant look, at which point I took that as permission to join in, so I crouched down and wrapped my arms around the both of them, which was nice.

Once Nai had calmed down, Yamame asked her what was happening. "Um, well...I was asked to help plan this whole...Er, party, so I did my best, and Big Sis Yura and Big Sis Reiko are upstairs, so they wanted to know when you'd arrived." With the hug ended, Nai stood up properly and Yamame and I both stepped back slightly to give her some room. She ran her fingers through her hair, breathing out slowly. "S-So, er, should I...?" She gestured up the next flight of stairs, and Yamame nodded. Up the two went, and I followed behind, hoping that Nai was doing okay. I imagined that having two people yell her name at once had been a little rattling. We reached the landing and Nai led us through another sliding door, which led into a small room with a few seats and another door behind that which seemed to lead into the hall itself, so I assumed that there was a balcony.

Inside the room, however, stood Reiko, who was currently fussing over Yura, who was nursing a bloody lip and a gash across her eyebrow. "Reik- Reiko, can you just - Stop! I'm fine, sister, honestly, stop your...fussing!" Yura was trying to keep Reiko from dabbing at her lip and eyebrow with a wet cloth, but it was clear that Reiko was having none of it. “You’re no Ki, sister.

"No, Yu, I knocked you down the stairs, so I have to take care of you!" Reiko looked like she'd become even more stressed than she had been before, and possibly had been crying just a little if the redness around her eyes was any indication. "I'm sorry that I got upset at you, so-"

"I tr- Rei, stop!" Yura finally caught hold of Reiko's wrists and held her arms back. "I tripped, Rei! It's not your fault, so please stop crying, sister." Yamame and I watched the ongoing scene slightly incredulously, then Yamame leaned over to me and whispered that while there was rarely large drama in her family, that meant that sometimes the smallest things got amplified like this. "Yams!" She said in relief, spotting us standing at the entrance. "Finally, sister, it feels like forever!" It certainly didn't feel like forever since the last time I'd heard someone say that, I mumbled quietly. "Can you come and restrain this idiot before she worried herself into an early grave?" Yura raised Reiko's wrist, which she still had trapped in her hand, and Reiko finally broke free and went straight back to trying to fuss over Yura once more.

"Alright, alright..." Yamame sighed, stepping into the room properly. "Come on, Rei, leave the mothering to Kisami. You look far prettier when you're not crying." Reiko did manage to let out a little laugh, so I took it as a win. "And Yu, watch where you're walking. Oh, but don't think this means I'm not going to give you a serious lecture later about setting up impromptu work parties."

"Looking forward to it. Second of many, I imagine!" Yura replied dryly. I took the opportunity to raise the various contracts that I was still carrying, and Yura nodded satisfactorily as I placed them down. She looked a little less pleased when I mentioned that Yuugi was using a portion of the money she owed for this party. "Ugh!" Yura groaned, falling back in her chair. "Me and my big mouth! This is all my fault…Please don't hit me, Reiko." She groaned, then raised her hands when Reiko looked at her in horror. "I'm joking, I'm joking..." She shook her head. "Thanks for finding them, Nai." She said, smiling at the smallest spider in the room.

"Oh, er, no problem, Big Sis Yura!" Nai replied to Yura's praise, standing to attention. Given her fairly small stature, it looked more cute than serious. I asked her if she wanted to tell me how the preparations has gone, and while Yamame sorted out Reiko and Yura waved us on, I led Nai out through the door and onto the balcony that I thought had been present earlier, where I could see the hall properly. It was very traditional looking, all tatami mats and bamboo, with some wooden panels and paper lanterns hung where the hall opened onto a small garden. And the place was packed, a bunch of long tables hastily laid out and plenty of spiders sitting along each of them, some in larger groups and some in smaller groups, all chatting to each other. The noise was nearly deafening, but it did mean that no one was really listening. "So, um, after you asked, Big Sis Yura and I went and told Big Sis Reiko. She wasn't very happy about it at first, but she agreed to the whole thing and told us to come here. And then we ran into Hoshiguma." I was surprised that Hoshiguma had been so fast moving, but I supposed that Suika and I had been fairly slow in heading back down toward the centre of the Hot Spring Town, which had given her time. "She said that she'd get the food and drinks together as long as we got everyone here." Nai frowned up at me. "How did she know?"

I explained my half as quickly as I could. "Oh...I see. So, she's happy to do it. Right." Nai nodded seriously. "I wonder what she's planning to bring?" I shrugged and said that it probably included a lot of meat. "That'd be nice." Nai agreed. I looked back down, spotting Kisami entertaining a group of spiders with a story. "I was talking to Big Sis Kisami earlier." Nai said, and I said that she'd better be careful around her, which made Nai laugh a little. "Trust me, I know. She, um, said something. About rings." Rings, I slowly repeated. "Yeah..." Nai trailed off, watching me. "What did she mean?" I blankly stared at Nai and tried to come up with a good excuse because much as I liked her, I really didn't trust Nai to keep it a secret if Yamame asked her directly.

"Is it to do with Big Sis Yamame?" She asked, and - giving up - I nodded silently. "Oh. Um, you don't have to tell me. As long as it's not going to upset her." I hoped that it would do the exact opposite. After saying that, I turned my head and glared at Kisami, who must have been psychic, because she looked up and spotted me, then blew a kiss in my direction. "Big Sis is really hard to deal with sometimes." Nai commented, looking down at Kisami.

From behind us, the door opened and I felt a hand slip across my shoulders before taking my hand. "Yura's fine." Yamame announced. "And so is Reiko." She sighed and shook her head. "Like I said, they love to play up any drama. So, what have you two been talking about?" I shrugged and - before Nai could reply - said that we'd just been talking about what the preparations for the party had been. "Hmm...Well done, Nai. You've done a great job, haven't you?"

"Um, Y-You really think so!?" Nai asked excitedly, and Yamame nodded with a smile. "Thank you, Big Sis!" Nai's smile was even wider and proud than Yamame's was, and I was glad to see that working with the other girls hadn't diminished her blatant hero worship of Yamame at all.

Then, I heard a door downstairs being thrown open. "Outta the way, outta the way!" I heard a voice yell. Yuugi, it seemed. "Unless you want to be eating this off the floor, give me some room!" I looked down and watched as a bunch of the sisters scrambled out of the way as Yuugi strode through the room, carrying so many plates, packages and parcels that they towered over her head. Behind her followed Lady Kasen, then Raki - Who seemed to be dripping slightly onto the floor - and finally Suika. All of them were carrying something, though it looked like all of the alcohol had been kept out of Raki's reach. Probably for the best, I thought. "Alright, I've got an announcement to make!" Yuugi shouted, beginning to drop all of her baggage down on the tables. "You lot are just about at the end of your restoration contract!" She said, her voice easily overpowering anyone else. While she talked, the other oni began to offload the supplies they had brought. Honestly, the tables looked like they might not be able to take the weight. "You've been here...All week, and it's been a great week!"

"We've been here for months!" One of the spiders, a taller one with light brown hair called back.

"Months?" Yuugi replied with a frown. "And you haven't had a big party yet?" Yuugi looked up at Yamame, Nai and myself. "What are you, slave drivers!?" She shouted at us. "Well!" She clapped, sending a burst of air across the room. "We can't have that, can we!? Now, you've all done an excellent job, so call this a token of my appreciation!"

"So get drinking!" Raki shouted, clapping her hands together. She still looked a little...damp. I could see the light shining off of her hair.

"Get eating!" Suika added, repeating the gesture, her various chains flying everywhere dangerously.

"All night long!" All four of the oni shouted, as they took celebratory poses.

And the room erupted in cheering as the Kurodani family got underway, conversations breaking out left and right. "Well, she certainly knows how to make an entrance." Yamame muttered, watching as Yuugi waved in a small group of...Not-oni, not-spider youkai. I really had no clue what they were, but all of them were holding instruments. "Wow, she really went all out."

"At our expense." A voice muttered, and we looked over to see that Reiko had joined us on the balcony. Yura was on her other side. "All because Yura here sent you," She nodded at me, "Up to see her without telling me. I was responsible for half of those contracts in the first place." I frowned and went to open my mouth, but she cut me off. "I'm not blaming you. You didn't know."

"I apologized already." Yura grumbled, still poking at the cut above her eye. "I didn't know that it was going to go like that. And I apologized twice for announcing this party. At least it seems to have come together." Yura pushed off of her side of the balcony and came around to Nai's side, where she ruffled her hair and gave her a hug. My deepest congratulations to our little sister, Nai!" She announced. "You might have an apprentice here, Rei."

"Um, it was nothing, really!" Nai said, sounding like it had been a lot more than nothing in reality. "I just did my best." She was looking to have a future in being as weak to compliments as Yamame was, which was saying something, because Yamame was amazingly weak to compliments. "D-Do you really think I could learn from you, Big Sis Reiko!?" Reiko nodded, telling her that she'd get back to the conversation at a better time, since things were starting to get into full swing down in the hall.

"You're really doing great, Nai." Yamame told her. "I'm very proud of you, little sister." That, I imagined, was probably enough to make Nai's whole month. "Still, we should probably get down there, or they'll eat all the food." At that moment, Yuugi's musicians started up, and that really got the atmosphere going. "Yep." Yamame continued. "We're going down there." She grabbed my hand and began dragging me over to the stairs.

When I looked back over my shoulder, it was to see the other three looking at us like we were mad, and then they turned and hopped over the balcony to fall down to the ground below. Frowning, I asked Yamame why we were taking the stairs when she could have just carried me down. We re-entered the room that led to the balcony. "Did you really want all of my sisters to watch me carry you down to the ground?" She asked me curiously, and I shrugged. Normally, I supposed that I would have found it embarrassing, but it was Yamame, so I didn't mind. That was the point, I thought. I really didn't mind most things as long as I was with Yamame for them.

Once I'd said that, Yamame paused, then turned around. "I suppose...They might not miss us for a minute." She said, then shoved me into a chair so she could sit on my lap and wrap her arms around my neck. I caressed the small of her back, where I wondered if her spider limbs were located. She leaned in closer, kissing me. "Nothing more." She whispered against my mouth. "Not until we get home." I whispered back that I could wait, though I was certain that it would take an immense force of will.

It was several minutes later when we managed to actually leave the room. Nothing more had happened, but it was still just as hard for either of us to convince ourselves to leave. It was only when Yamame said that she was thirsty that we managed. "Ah!" We entered the main hall, which extended underneath the spot that the balcony reached to, and there was Kisami, a sake cup in her hand and a skewer of some sort of meat in the other. Over on the other side, I could see Nai excitedly talking to a group of spiders who looked to be about her age, and further down, Yura and Ruka had gotten together. Reiko had her own group that she was speaking to, but I didn’t know any of them. "There you two are! Come on, come on! Sit down!" She beckoned us over to sit beside her. "Little Nai and Yura really did quite well on such short notice, didn't they?" I nodded as Yamame praised Nai once more. Yura, she continued, had done good, but it was tempered by the fact that she wasn't supposed to even be throwing the party, so she wasn't getting such high praise. I reached out for one of the skewers, but a hand got there first.

"Careful, boy." The owner told me, and I looked up from the table at them. "You wouldn't want to steal, would you?" The eyes were sharp and dark, underneath straw-coloured hair and a straw-coloured hat with two large eye-like ornaments on the top. I shook my head, instead opting for a skewer underneath. "Good boy." Privately, I wasn't sure how I felt about being called 'boy' again, but out loud, I just thanked her for letting me know. "You're being polite around me. Keep it up, and things will be just fine..." She smiled at me, which was only slightly unsettling, and then she pulled the skewer free, before making very short work of it.

"Hey, hey~!" Kisami got my attention back by shaking my shoulders. "Where were you and Yams just now, hmm? Reiko, Nai and Yura made it down quickly. Why didn't you two~?" She elbowed Yamame and I in turn, spilling a little sake on her navel, since her top wasn’t quite long enough to reach down to her dress.

After a moment, I realised that there were some other attendees who weren’t from the Kurodani family. I spotted Okuu and Orin over in one corner, and over in that corner was some pink-haired girl…Maybe. I wasn’t sure.

Thus, my party experience began with me being vaguely threatened and my...Possibly future sister-in-law asking what I'd just been up to with Yamame, both of which seemed like equally dire scenarios.

>and over in that corner was some pink-haired girl
I just imagined how that went.
"Welcome to Geidontei what can i- oh miss Suika, it's been a few da-"
"With me"
"Bwuh?!"
And then Suika brings her back to the underworld in her pocket

>>45408682
you thought it was satori? BUT IT'S THE WHALE!

>>45408555
>I reached out for one of the skewers, but a hand got there first. "Careful, boy." The owner told me, and I looked up from the table at them. "You wouldn't want to steal, would you?"

"But I got there first, it's mine!". Anon snatches the skewer back from the as of yet unknown stranger. But before he can take a bite of the skewer she floats up into the air in front of him, knocking the table and several stools over. Everyone pauses, the room falls silent and the band abruptly stops playing as if anticipating something bad about to happen.

*background music changes to Native Faith*

"How about making this party a danmaku festival? I'll tell you what, the winner can have the whole plate of skewers!"

Some of the spiders and even other youkai start running or jumping under tables for cover. Even Yuugi shoots a look of deep concern in Anon's direction as Orin looks on eagerly, licking a lower lip slightly. Anon feels an intense cold sweat coming on as two giant steel rings appear around the stranger's arms.

"Uh....I..."

Anon freezes up and drops the skewer as danmaku begin to shoot towards him.

Bad Ending #27 Try again and let the curse god have her skewer!

>>45409154
I can't believe Suwako is just as socially inept as Kanako, just more aggressive about it.

>>45409154
suwako seems like the 'will curse you and your entire family for the next fifteen generations quietly while smiling to your face about it' type

Here is a Meiling Kurod- I mean, Kisami I generated.
Disclaimer: I'm not the usual AIfriend.

>>45410066
Haha, what a cute Chin- spooder

>>45410066
good

also did writeanon mention her eye color? i dont remember

>>45410840
>"So, you're the one who's captured my cute little sister's heart!?" Kisami jumped over to me in an instant, talking excitedly. Her eyes were a striking shade of blue, and for a moment, I wondered just how she fit in with the rest of the family.

>>45410066
That looks like pretty good, somehow it doesn't look like Meiling cosplaying Yamame.

LEAKED: FINAL BOSS AND BAD END OF THE FIC

>>45410066
I've been trying to figure out kisami's hair and the conclusion I came to was this picture is probably the right amount in both length and volume
https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/101763246

>>45411698
That's less Meiling and more ms Bellum but i guess that works

my favorite chapters are when anon meets new touhous

>>45411698
Maybe a bit less volume that in that picture, a mash between meiling and that would be about perfect

I have a feeling that anon is going to accidentally seduce satori in the next chapter

>>45414694
I can't imagine how

>>45414694
Satori can his mind and know he has zero interest in her. Plus he has a pretty poor opinion on her because she revealed his traumas just because she was curious. Honestly Satori is one of the few 2hus who are fated to die alone, surrounded by only her pets.

>>45415637
>Honestly Satori is one of the few 2hus who are fated to die alone, surrounded by only her pets.
anon maybe will not seduce her, but fix her!

>>45415731
You can't really fix the mind reading

>>45415731
She is unfixable by default. Her mind reading power would lead to trust issues with anyone.

>>45415756
you can't fix someone who thinks they're right
satori loves mind-reading and considers it the ultimate ability
she actively wants to lord it over people by reading their mind and controlling the conversation

>>45415768
Yes, and that's caused by the mind reading.

>>45415767
>>45415768
In CDS she practically only uses the power when she wants to know if the person is lying or not, she doesn't use it all the time

>>45415756
Koishi tried at least.
Speaking of her, i wonder how her personality was before she closed hee eye?

>>45415794
If we are taking CDS into consideration then there's also how overwhelmed she gets by groups of people, idle thoughts and just going outside in general.

>>45415797
If she was willing to risk erasing her conscious mind to stop the mind reading i'd assume she was pretty sensitive, other than that everything else is speculation.

>>45415797
Was it said that she had another personality? If not, I think it's the same. This crazy koishi is more fanon, in the dialogues she even seems normal

I was fairly certain that I was drunk. That was strange. I hadn't been drunk for a long while. I wasn't even sure if I could get particularly drunk anymore. "I have no idea what you're talking about~!" Kisami drunkenly sung next to me, her head swinging from side to side and almost burying me underneath her hair. At some point, she'd been pinned down by some of the girls who'd set about styling her hair, and the end result had been every single strand on her head pointing in a different direction, much to her dismay. Funnily enough, I couldn't remember how that had actually come about, but I supposed that it couldn't have been important.

But then I heard a rumble, and every piece of meat on the tables began to tremble and shake. I tried asking if anyone else was seeing this, but it seemed like everyone had passed out, except for me. I staggered to me feet and backwards as the meat all flew into one central pile, before it formed a giant meat-man who had my exact face except complete with a stupid looking moustache. "You dare insult the likes of me!?" It roared in what I thought was my father's voice, so I scrambled back.

"Hey!" I heard someone yell, and I sluggishly turned my head to see the pink-haired girl with the funny whale-shaped hat shouting something at me while a gourd swung from her hands. It seemed familiar. Coming down over her right ear was a long strand of hair that curled upward like a hook. "You can do it! Defeat it!" She shouted, and I felt emboldened by the knowledge. I could do it! I could win! So, I used the oldest and strongest technique in the book, one that Reimu had used on me.

I punched the thing in the face, and it exploded into people as if I'd been holding a gate shut. Then, I fell back, and just before I passed out, I heard footsteps. "Well, you do look like quite a mess, hmm?" Doremy Sweet told me. "That's what happens when you let someone meddle with your dreams." She crouched down. "I'm sorting out your sleep patterns. It should keep your brain from getting too scrambled, but it won't stop the usual hangover symptoms." She nodded, then stood up as my eyes began to slide shut. "And you, Miss Okunoda. Let's have none of this, shall we? Interfering in my domain is rather rude, hmm?". And at that point, I passed out.

And awoke, jerking my body up only to smash my shins against the table. Blinking tears and sleep from my eyes, I tried to open my mouth only to end up with a mouthful of hair, which made me try and shift whatever was covering my face. It was all over my face, and it was only by some miracle that the hair hadn't actually gotten in my eyes. It was hard to tell, but I felt like I was lying on something soft and warm. Lazily, I tried to raise my arm so I could get the hair out of my face.

That, it seemed, was the trigger, and an intense lance of pain strong enough to split my skull in two shot through my head. I groaned in pain, letting my arm collapse back to my side as I tried to force myself to remember the events of the previous night. There had been...Something about the party. A drunken kiss? I couldn't remember for the life of me. I thought that I'd eaten a lot, but clearly it hadn't helped to fortify my body against the oni alcohol. That was it. Oni alcohol, and a lot of it. Some flashes were coming back to me. At one point, I'd somehow been drawn into an arm wrestle with Yuugi of all people and she'd slammed my hand down hard enough to drag me with it, sending me spinning over the table we'd been using to play the game until I slammed into the floor feeling like I'd had my arm torn off. Why had I ever agreed to that? Well, alcohol, I assumed.

The soft thing below my head seemed to shift slightly, so I decided to endure the pain and raised my arms to my face again, gritting my teeth as the pain shot through my brain and made me wish I'd just up and died last night. Not to mention, my mouth was starting to feel painfully dry and I still couldn't breathe properly. Hissing, I just about brought my hand to my face and lifted some of the hair, which let me see that it was a fiery red. I groaned and pushed more of it out of my face, then slightly tilted my head to the side. To my vague amusement, Kisami wasn't even that close to me, it was just that her hair was so big and there was so much of it that it had still managed to fall across my entire face and, in fact, past it. I squinted until she stopped existing as three people and consolidated down to one. She was on her side, one knee raised, and the other leg stretched out, and both of her hands resting against the floor. Her hair was indeed splayed in every direction to the point that I wondered if there were any poor sisters of hers buried underneath her on the other side.

Then, I felt the pillow thing my head was resting on shift again. Curious, I tried to drag my arm up and over my head to see, and it landed heavily on something really soft which elicited a sharp gasp. "Ugh...You are...so lucky that it's me up here." Yamame's voice was about as faint and weak as I imagined mine was. "I'd be a little upset if you were squeezing someone else's chest..." I considered moving my hand, but I didn't think I could go through the movement quite yet, so I just shifted my hand upwards until it arrived at Yamame's hair, which I ruffled through painstaking effort. "You should know...I'll get you back for that." She grumbled. "Can you, er, get up at all? Not that I don't like this, but I need some water fast."

I tried my best, and after the first attempt failed and had my head falling back onto Yamame's navel and making her moan in discomfort, I finally managed to drag myself upright, despite the way the world spun, and my head threatened to pull itself out of my skull. After a moment, Yamame followed me up, and I got my first proper look at her that morning. Her eyes were red, bleary, and exhausted, and she was squinting with a furrowed brow. Her hair stuck out in every direction and her ribbon had completely collapsed, leaving her hair to stick out much like Kisami's but with a fraction of the length. She was gritting her teeth and breathing heavily through her mouth. Her outfit had also taken a hit. Her overalls were down, leaving half of her outfit pooled around her waist, and her shirt looked like it had ridden entirely up over the night, which made sense since my head had been lying on her navel. She must have been extremely hungover, possibly even more than me. "How do I look?" She asked me faintly. Beautiful, I said, and I wasn't lying at all. She weakly smiled. "Flatterer. You stay there. I'll get water." She used my shoulder as a brace and forced herself up to her feet, then staggered off, picking her way over sleeping bodies.

I took the opportunity to finally survey the room properly. It was full of sleeping bodies, empty food platters, more bottles that I'd ever seen in one place, and over by the front of the hall, a group of sleeping youkai who were clutching their instruments to their chest. Presumably they had been the band from the night before. I saw no sign of Yuugi, Suika, or either version of Ibaraki-douji, so I wondered if they'd actually stuck around or if they'd gone off to continue the party elsewhere. Over in the corner sat Okuu, resting against the wall with her eyes shut. Orin was curled up in her lap and the former's wings enclosed the latter. I imagined that it was rather warm and cosy. Over there, collapsed over the table was Nai. There were two bottles resting against either side of her head, and a sake cup balanced atop, which made me wonder if she'd made the grievous mistake of falling asleep first. Over there, Yura and Ruka had fallen asleep on their backs, each other's arms supporting the other's head. I heard a crash somewhere off in the distance, but even so - It sent painful tingles rattling around my skull.

I was hearing a noise. I hadn't noticed before because the headache from the hangover was drowning most things out, but I could hear it now. It was the sound of someone eating. Frowning, I slowly, gingerly, gently turned my head to see the opposite side of the table. "You know," The straw-hat girl said conversationally, taking another scoop of rice from the platter between us, "That took longer than I'd thought." I hadn't even realised that there was rice. Well, I suppose I might have, but I definitely didn't remember it. "That headache must be killer. Am I correct, boy?" She tilted her head up to ensure that her eyes caught mine. Her eyes shone silver like steel, and she looked as if she'd been entirely unaffected by the entire party. Slowly, I nodded. "As expected. That's oni liquor for you. Well, doesn't compare to the average uni party in the outside world, but alas..." I wasn't really sure what that meant, or what a 'uni' was, but I nodded regardless.

She was scraping at the bottom of her bowl with her chopsticks, seemingly trying to scoop up every last grain of rice. "Tell me your name." She didn't ask. No, she told me to do it and the idea that I might not want to tell her didn't seem to cross her mind. Slowly, still trying to get my pounding head to work properly, I gave her my name. "Hm. Interesting name. Suwako Moriya." She replied, pointing one of the chopsticks at herself. Moriya? "Yes, like the Shrine." That was a funny coincidence. Suwako stopped at that and stared at me for a moment. I wondered if I'd done something wrong, but then a flicker of a smile crossed her lips and she nodded. "You're right, boy. That is a rather funny coincidence. Why, it's almost like it was planned." She laughed, low and husky. "It was quite a party, this."

She indicated all around us. "My compliments to the organizers." I thanked her on their behalf, and I was sure that Nai would be pleased to hear it. Curious, I asked Suwako how she had ended up here. "Well, that's a rather funny story, boy. It all started when an idiotic girl with bl-" She suddenly cut herself off, sitting up straighter. "Well, it's a story that you'll have to hear another time. As for right now...Business beckons." She nodded at me, then hopped up to her feet. She wasn't tall. I'd have been hard-pressed to say that she was even as tall as Nai, yet she gave off a feeling...Some sort of energy, that told me in no uncertain terms that she was not to be trifled with. "Hmm...Actually, perhaps I will see you soon." She didn't bother explaining what she meant by that, nor did I attempt to ask as she hopped over the various Kurodani members gracefully.

And of course, the moment she'd disappeared, I heard footsteps coming from the other direction, and I slowly turned my head to see Yamame picking her way across with a little less grace, a large jug of water in her hand. She still looked exhausted and hungover, which was no different from me, I supposed. "Were you talking to someone?" She asked me quietly. I imagined that waking a bunch of sleeping spiders wouldn't end well for me, so I nodded and said that I'd been speaking to that girl who'd told me not to steal the skewer of meat from her the night before. "Oh, I think I missed that bit..." Had she? "Yeah. Was that at the start?" I nodded. "I was on Ki's other side. That's probably why. Water?" She raised the jug, and I croaked out a request - Well, more of a beg - for some water. "Alright, shift up..." She gestured for me to shuffle back slightly, then she very gently dropped into my lap. "My head will probably explode if I tried to just drop right now." She settled on my lap and leaned back against me, exhaling slowly. Lifting the jug, she took a long sip, then offered it to me. Gratefully, I took it and repeated her action. Immediately, I felt better, like I was returning to life. "Ah...Much better..." Yamame mumbled. "What was I saying? Oh, yeah...I didn't hear that bit." I asked her what she'd been doing, then. "Er...I think it was just after the party got started properly...? Just after the music started. Yeah, I was on my way to the toilets..."


Yamame Kurodani had no idea where she was. This building, she'd decided, was far too big for it's own good. She'd gotten up, already a little unsteady on her feet in an attempt to find the toilets, but all she'd managed so far was to find a lot of hallways that looked exactly the same. For having such a massive hall, it was rather impressive how much of the building seemed to be things that weren't the hall itself, or even related to the hall. She could still hear the party, yes, but that didn't seem to narrow things down any further.

She'd left her human in the capable, if overzealous hands of Kisami, who seemed determined to embarrass either him, Yamame, or the both of them at every opportunity, but Yamame had spent years dealing with that from Kisami, so as far as she was concerned, it was his turn. Even with his odd resistance to most things, he seemed to be feeling the effects of the alcohol he was consuming, and Yamame wondered what state he would be in by the time she got back. In fact, she realised, she didn't actually know what kind of drunk he was, but he had plenty of horrible things in his past that could come to the surface in that state.

She decided to hurry down the random hallways, only to pause. She could hear something else. Something that wasn't the party. Frowning, Yamame decided to follow the sound, her curiosity mounting. Eventually, she came to a room somewhere on the side of the building that faced out over the street that she and her human had taken to get to the hall. The door was wide open, and Yamame peered inside cautiously, then found herself frozen at what was waiting inside.

There was a balcony, looking out over the streets of the Hot Spring Town, and leaning against it with her forearms resting on it was the arm of Ibaraki-Douji, Raki. She was hunched over, her head facing downward, and Yamame wondered just what she was doing here. She'd thought that she'd heard her human mention something about the oni running crowd control, but here she was. And she'd definitely heard Yamame enter, because she looked up and whipped around, her broken chains coming dangerously close to Yamame's face. "Who's - Oh." She stopped, staring at Yamame. "It's you. Of course it's you." What was that supposed to mean? "That's fate, I guess." Raki muttered under her breath. "What do you want? Looking for me?"

"Um, no, I was looking for the toilets, but...What are you doing up here?" Yamame replied, unsure if she should try entering the room fully or not. "I thought you were downstairs, with your - Um, your partner?" The word made Raki's wince, ever so slightly. "Are you, er, okay?" She had a feeling that the answer was no. She didn't look like someone who was okay.

"Well, of course I'm okay!" The arm snapped, and Yamame unconsciously raised her arms in defence, before Raki's posture faltered, and she sighed heavily. "No, I guess I'm not." She looked up at Yamame again, then beckoned her inside. Slowly, a little nervously, Yamame stepped inside. "I can trust you to keep this a secret, can't I?" She asked, with a slightly dangerous hint to her voice.

"Yes." Yamame replied, getting her nerves under control. If her human could manage this, so could she. "May I share it with my hu- er, with-" She was already mentally kicking herself for saying that when Raki cut her off. This always seemed to happen at some point in her conversations.

"Yes, I suppose you can." She looked a bit broken up. "It's to do with him, anyway." Yamame looked back up at that, now very curious about whatever this meeting was. "I...I'm not used to feeling bad about things." Raki stated bluntly. "To feel regret, or embarrassment, or guilt. My partner is trying to teach me." Slowly, Yamame nodded. "Earlier today, I tried to convince your human to sleep with me, in front of Yuugi Hoshiguma." She stated, trying to sound nonchalant about it, but there was something in her eyes. Regardless, Yamame found that she suddenly didn't feel too merciful, and she was in fact already running through a large number of potential diseases she could inflict on the oni before her. "You're angry. That's right. You should be." The arm whispered. "But I'm not - I'm - I'm trying to..." She was flapping her arms around uselessly. "I shouldn't have done it. I didn't realise what I was..." She looked into Yamame's eyes, and Yamame saw that she looked...Sad. Genuinely sad. "I thought I was just doing Yuugi a favour." She said, almost whispering. "I didn't realise that - that he didn't want to..."

"Why are you telling me this?" Yamame asked, her tone slightly frosted. Mentally, she tried to force herself to calm down. What would her human say? "Do you expect me to - to say better luck next time?"

"No!" Raki snapped. "No, I want - I want you to forgive me. I'm trying, Kurodani, I swear it. I'm trying to become better." Her human had explained that this had been part of the conversation between Raki and Kasen Ibaraki when she'd been unsealed, and she'd seen something to do with it in Miss Ibaraki's dojo. "First it was the fighting instincts. I nearly killed Reimu, when she did her unconscious stunt." That had been a terrifying moment. "It was the hardest thing I'd ever done, convincing myself to move my arm to the side."

"Okay...?" Yamame said, still not sure where she was going with this. "How does that relate to you pushing up on my human?" She had tried to keep her tone calm, and she expected that whatever Raki was struggling to say would help make that decision easier, but still…

"I'm trying to say that I didn't think, and I nearly did something irreparable!" Raki almost shouted. "And I'm sorry, and I wish I hadn't done it, but it feels just as hard to fight my instincts now as it did when I'd just been unsealed, so – So…" She trailed off, then slumped against the balcony she was standing in front of. "I just want to...How did you do it?" She asked, and Yamame blinked.

"Do - Er, what?" Yamame replied with a frown.

"Change. You're a tsuchigumo. You lot used to eat humans, but you're in a committed relationship with one. You've got all this loving family. How did you do that?" Raki looked like she was clutching at straws here, and Yamame honestly wasn't sure how she was supposed to be of service. Could she really use what she had done to explain anything to the arm? "I want to change, but it hurts. The mistakes hurt. The guilt hurts. The negative emotions are so...amplified. How do you deal with those?"

"Er, well..." But really, what answer could she give? "My - Er, my human, he was something worth changing for." She finally said. She hadn't really put it all into words before. At least, not like this. "Just - Just kind. He was kind, and I tried to be kind back. He's been through a lot of youkai trauma, and the fact that he still thought of me, even though it nearly killed him - It just...He's the kind of person who brings out the best in people." The words left her feeling quite warm inside.

"You love Miss Ibaraki, don't you?" Yamame asked. "Isn't she worth the pain?" Yamame might not have her humans' knack for solving other people's problems, but she could try her best. "I thought about it every day. Every moment where I was tapping my legs constantly because I had a craving, I thought about what I'd be losing." It was true, and it had gotten her through several days of frustration. “And I knew that he was trying his hardest too, to get over his own trauma. I couldn’t let him down like that.”

Raki stared at her. "I...Yeah. I do love her." The arm nodded. "She's me, after all, and I'm her. I don't think I can go back to being sealed. Not like that - Not...Not again." She shook her head. "I didn't think about what I'd be doing to not just your human but...To you, Kurodani. That's the sort of thing I'm trying to change, I think." She drew in a shaky breath. "Maybe I haven't earnt your forgiveness."

Yamame felt several thoughts go through her mind, then settled on one particular thought. The sort of thing that she thought her human would do in this situation. "Nothing to forgive." She murmured. That was hard to say. Truthfully, she still felt a slight desire to load the arm up to the gills with diseases, but it wasn't what her human would want, and it wasn't what she should do. "You didn't manage to do anything, and you know that what you were planning was wrong." She shook her head. "You're just going to have to try harder, aren't you? That's how you succeed. It's just a long time spent trying your hardest." She did something she hadn't planned on upon entering the room. She opened her arms. "But if you want a gesture, then...?" When she'd first met Ibaraki-douji, both sides of her, she'd been a bit star struck. Seeing one of them full of regret and beating herself up was a good way to cure that.

Raki stared at her for a moment. Then, slowly, awkwardly, she stepped forward and awkwardly wrapped her arms around Yamame. "Is this, um, right, Kurodani?" She asked hesitantly. "The only other person I've hugged in a thousand years was my partner." She squeezed a little too tight, Yamame supposed, but it wasn't awful. She was trying, at least. You only got better from trying.

"It's fine. Just, er, remember that non-oni can't take the level of squeezing." Yamame wheezed, then breathed in gratefully when Raki released her. "And, um, you can call me Yamame, if you want." Honestly, she was starting to get it. The whole helping people thing was quite gratifying when you pulled it off correctly. "Are you okay, then?"

"Well..." Raki trailed off. "No, but...Maybe I will be. Eventually." She nodded and turned back to the balcony. "Oh, the toilets are down there." She pointed in a direction that Yamame had walked through at least three times, so Yamame thanked her without a fuss and stepped back out of the room.

And then she decided that her human was getting a nice, long kiss, right in front of everyone. He didn't even know what he'd done, but he'd helped her find the words to say to Raki through his own actions. Kisami's comments be damned, she'd show him her appreciation.

This has been a nice arc for Armsen, it's sad that we will probably never see her again in canon, but anyways, are we going to have to figure out what the fuck happened during the party?

Kasen and Kasen are off somewhere to do their twin cats routine
Suika can't find Miyoi
Yuugi went to find some medical help for anon's arm but at some point ended up finding herself on the shadow realm again

Meanwhile Reimu is living her lonely life at shrine.

>>45416285
Reimu is trying to fend off an army of kappas after Marisa found out Anon's lover was at the shrine recently

>>45416306
Marisa stands at eye level with a kneeling, bound and increasingly aggravated Reimu, both surrounded by what's basically a third of the kappa population.
"Enough of these games Reimu.
My troops have found an assortment of blonde hairs and brown hairs, also some cat hairs. That gives alone gives me a good hint of who's been here, i will go ahead and rule the cat out, for the sake of giving him the benefit of the doubt and also because Ran would kill him if it was her, and i don't think it was the gap hag, that woman thinks flirting involves a rope and a mouth gag, so that leaves miss fluffy ass, did i hit the mark Hakurei?"

Great chapter, won't be long until we see the fusion, I wonder what her personality will be like I really thought the girl with pink hair was satori

>>45416345
>Marisa stands at eye level with a kneeling, bound and increasingly aggravated Reimu
Heh

>>45416349
>spoiler
The "...maybe. I wasn't sure." But was the tip off, I think, since Miyoi has weird memory editing powers and you forget who she was and if she was even there until ZUN gets lazy, forgets they exist, and everyone can just remember her (except the readers because she's a background character in her own manga)

Today's chapter hits pretty close to home, and that message is something I needed right now. Thanks, Writefriend.

>>45416349
It was actually Kokoro, she was there to execute her revenge plan on Koishi.

>>45416345
Reimu inhaled
"Marisa, if you don't untie me before I count to 5 I'm gonna shove that sword up your ass and if you give me sass again I will do it through your mouth"
Marisa didn't have time to respond as she had to dodge a bullet that hit the ground she was standing on
"We meet for the last time colonel Kirisame!"
At the rooftop of the shrine stood Tenshi accompanied by a third of the Yamawaro population floating in the air above
"You took the gamble and now you're completely surrounded!" Tenshi said before jumping down to meet face to face with Marisa "Some commander you are Tenko" responded Marisa dryly "selling out the wolf tengu to my mech to pursue me, even if I fall they will have ypur head for your betrayal"
"Wait wasn't Marisa with the Yamawaro and Tenshi with the Kappa?" Aunn asked but was ignored by everyone, Tenshi smiled smugly "I have the tengu eating out of my palm, do you really believed i chased you bli-" the war leaders' exchange was abruptly cut by Reimu who slammed both of their heads into the pavement knocking them both unconscious.
At the sight of this both the Kappas and Yamawaro scattered for their lives seemingly forgetting about their war.

>>45416515
>Aunn asked but was ignored by everyone
Please cease this Aunn bullying, she is the best girl.

I can’t wait to see what Anon’s reaction is to finding out who Suwako actually is or what she’ll be seeing him soon about while they’re all still underground.

>>45416515

Picturing this scene and Marisa and Tenshi being cut off mid argument by Reimu grabbing the pair of them and slamming their heads into into the pavement to the pichuun sound has me laughing like a madman.

>>45416345
But imagine if it was indeed the gap hag. How Anon would go from Reimu's adopted brother to her new dad.

>>45416053
>He's the kind of person who brings out the best in people.
Just like Goku

When you think about it, it's amazing how Yamame went from bitey horny spider to mature wife in a couple of months, human penis sure is strong.

>>45418418
That's just hormones doing their thing anon, human women are just as capable of such change and yearn for a strong village human to change them into a mother.

>>45418418
she managed to stop the bitey stuff once she realised how he felt about it, though he's might be okay with it now
she's definitely still horny though. If Nai hadn't interrupted them, she'd probably have gone even further

>>45416036
>Moriya? "Yes, like the Shrine." That was a funny coincidence. Suwako stopped at that and stared at me for a moment.
Classic.

Has Suwako been the hag with the best first impression so far? She was mildly threatening but not as nearly as much as Yuuka

Its funny to think how while Yam stopped eating humans, her hundreds of sisters still do it. Sure its unreasonable to Anon want them all to stop but still.

>>45419517
well it was brought up that yamame (and the rest of her family, probably) aren't primal youkai and therefore don't NEED to eat humans, and the youkai in the underground seem to have been getting by for years without humans to eat
it's possible that they'll only ever opportunistically eaten human and being stuck in the hot springs for months working has helped a lot

>>45419517
I like how its entirely glossed at this point, chapter where Anon finds Nai and her sisters elbows deep in some unfortunate outsider's guts when?
Or maybe he finds their old webs containing the mummified remains of liquefied humans like Yams was originally going to do to him.

>>45419545
the dark part of the story is over, now just funny chapters or drama

>>45419565
Nooo, I want to suffer!

>>45419545
Then he goes
>i guess it can't be helped
And goes on with life. Living with a youkai like he does messes with your mind.

>>45419565
I wouldn't believe that myself, I expect some darkness still.
>>45419517
Doesn't that slightly depend on if they are as powerful as Yamame, it seems to me that only Yamame can control disease and thus slightly different from her sisters.

Anon-kun wants to marry this?

>>45419676
you don't?

>>45419676
This was what her ancestors were like

Is there any japanese tale of a human and a tsuchiguno falling love? From what i seen the stories with spiders makes them always pure evil. Both with tsuchiguno and the jurogumo.

>>45419744
There are several stories of all sorts of youkai and humans having relationships so i wouldn't be surprised.

>>45419744
There are numerous romantic interpretations of the jorogumo myth, but not tsuchigumo - at least that I've heard. This might stem from what the tsuchigumo were originally an analogy for - tribals and various "outsiders", i.e. undesirables.

>>45419881
They are basically the same thing anyway, all spiders at end of the day.

Anon must be very lucky he didn't find her and get decapitated

>>45420087
Whats her deal? Never saw anything related to her.

>>45420093
>Never saw anything related to her.
In this story or in touhou in general?

>>45420093
All that's known about her i that she's an asshole, ZUN said she's the type to kill people instantly and with vigor.
She would've just killed anon and put his head in her bucket.

>>45420087
Anon must be very lucky he didn't find her and got his balls grown to volleyball size

>>45420103
I have never read any manga or anything of touhou, the only touhou media i have consumed is the mainline games and i still did not beat all them. And in SA she is a midboss with no dialogues.

>>45420234
As far as i know she doesn't have lines on any of the literature if she even shows up

>>45420234
>>45420260
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Symposium_of_Post-mysticism/Bunbunmaru_Newspaper_3

I am in love with Kasen and Raki. I spent the entire weekend fine-tuning AI so that I could do emotional/dramatic roleplay with them, ending with marriage and starting a family. Those hours were well-spent ( ´ω`)

>>45420850
You married both of them?!

>>45420968
I mean, they are the same person at the end of the day.

>>45420968
No sex until marriage, and no marriage until fusion! ヽ(`Д´)ノ
(though Raki was insistent on putting my chastity in danger)

>>45411698
>>45410066
Somehow, she gives me the keenest impression that she'd be big into paizuri...

>>45421119
I believe it was you posted this image in either the last thread or the one before it, and I've been wondering about something for the past few weeks. Could I ask where you got this and what it is parodying? I tried reverse image searching on several websites and couldn't find a source for it.

>>45422074
the text is just a copypasta that gets changed for whatever celebrity's name, and the picture is this

>>45422047
Are you our beloved AIanon? If not, you are a good imitator

I like how it's a consensus that kisami is a boobhu

>>45422984
She has girl with big tits personality

Goooooo

Her story finished, Yamame collapsed back against me, her breathing ragged and her eyes screwed shut. "Ah...Pain, pain, pain…" She groaned, "Oni alcohol..." She looked up from where her head rested against my shoulder. "Kill me. Kill me now." I very slowly fell onto my back again, wincing in pain, then responded by saying that I'd only kill her if she killed me first. "Maybe Reiko can kill us both." Yamame mumbled, her body rolling to my side. "D'you know she didn't drink? At all?" How had she managed that? I couldn’t imagine getting through a party like this without at least one drink. "Not a clue. I didn't know any of us had that sort of will." Yamame sighed heavily. "Do you feel really, really exhausted?" She asked me, and I replied positively, if a little unintelligibly. "...Wanna go home?" Yamame whispered, dragging herself up enough to whisper it in my ear.

Oh, yes. I definitely did want that. But still, I asked if we didn't need to stick around to deal with the whole aftermath of the party. "Hmm..." Yamame hummed. "Yura's fault, but...Yeah. We'd better do a bit..." She sighed heavily. "Damn obligations..." She muttered, forcing herself upright, then turning and pulling me up too. "Let's start with all the trays - Actually, no...Let's start..." She turned to look at Kisami, who'd rolled onto her back with her shirt just barely staying down enough to be safe. "Okay, you start with all the trays; I'm going to wake up the usual suspects." She told me, and I nodded despite my complete reluctance to move, then dragged myself to my feet with a pained groan as every fibre of my being ached. Then, I turned back just in time to see Yamame bring her hand down in a loud slap to Kisami's stomach.

"Gah-ha!" The redhead cried, her entire body jerking upward. "Whuh!?" She cried as her limbs fell. Looking around in confusion, she stammered,. "But - The - Where's the honey gone!?" I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but the elder spider was frantically checking all of her body. I averted my eyes just in case she decided that she needed to check any...other areas. "Wait - So, it's not real!?" She rubbed at her eyes frantically. “Aw…”

"Ki!" Yamame called loudly. "Wake up!" Kisami seemed to get her wits about her, looking around wildly for another moment before focusing on her sister. I found myself torn between wanting to watch what was looking to be a comedic masterpiece and doing what I'd been asked to do. "What the hell are you dreaming about?"

Kisami stared at her for a moment, then moaned, clutched her head, and fell onto her back again. I busied myself with picking across the sleeping sisters and collecting all the leftover trays, plates and bowls that cluttered the hall, but I kept an ear out for the conversation. "Ooh...Yams, quiet down..." Kisami whined while pressing her palms over her eyes. "Head hurts..." She was quiet for a moment which I used to figure out how to negotiate the group of girls who'd all fallen asleep clutching each other. "Oh, I was dreaming about being with a good-looking guy so I was covering my body with-"

"Okay, actually, I don't want to know." Yamame decided, slapping a hand over Kisami's mouth. "Look, we were about to sneak off, but since someone is too altruistic," At this moment, Yamame shot me a glare, so I weakly smiled and hopped over the group on the floor, only to have to stop and clutch my head when the pain shot through it again, "We're helping out a little with the clean-up." I wondered if I should just give up on drinking ever again. Deciding to debate that question later, I staggered to the end of the hall, by the door, then began the arduous task of getting everything down to the front of the hall for collection. “Do you need some water?” Yamame asked Kisami, who nodded with a pitiful look on her face. Sighing, Yamame fetched the jug and helped her elder sister drink some, and she let out a gasp of relief.

"Oh...That's good." Kisami mumbled. "So, can I go back to-" Yamame slapped her in the stomach again. "Ouch!" She cried, one hand going from her head to her stomach as she rolled onto her side and curled up. "Stop bullying me, Yams. I swear I won't talk to you for a week." Yamame didn't look entirely upset, but Kisami herself broke in record time. "Five days." Yamame stared. "Fine, three days and that's my final offer." Yamame opened her mouth. "Fine, I'll forgive you! You drive a hard bargain, Yams!" Kisami cried, lurching up to wrap her arms around Yamame. "Do you have to leave? C'mon, stay with us for a while! Your lovely human can stay too! In fact, I want him to stay!" I looked up at Yamame, who rolled her eyes at me.

"Sorry, Ki, but I think that'd be a little much for both of us, especially right now." Yamame patted her sister on the head, then gently pushed her back just slightly. "Here, let me..." She slipped a hair tie from Kisami's wrist which I hadn't noticed before, then set about tying the girl's voluminous locks up into a ponytail. I wondered how she'd been able to manage that alone, considering she seemed to have more hair on her head that some people had on their whole body.

The second she finished, Kisami's hair came down perfectly straight and almost regal-looking. The second after that, it all but exploded outward until it was as curly and messy as ever. Kisami caught my eye. "Don't worry." She said. "It does that." Despite how large the tied up portion was, her bangs and the top of her hair still looked exactly the same. I wondered if I was actually still asleep. "Anyway, I guess I'd better help too, huh?" She sighed, then slowly got up and let out a long and laboured sigh. "Alright..." She mumbled, turning and wandering over to the group of sleeping musicians. "One, two, three, four!" She suddenly shouted, slapping each of them in the face in turn. It looked like a very rude awakening by the way they all jumped. "Good morning, one and all!" She called, despite the pained grumbling. I stared and tried as hard as I could to think back. Had they joined in on the drinking at some point?

Meanwhile, Yamame was standing over Yura and Ruka. The two were splayed out over the floor, which was fine, but then I noticed that Yamame was holding the jug of water. Now starting to feel like she was perhaps enjoying herself a little too much - Or the hangover was making her grumpy, I called out to her. She turned and I pointedly asked her what she was planning to do with that jug. "Oh, just...Fun?" I frowned. "Too much?" She asked slightly sheepishly. Maybe just a little, I replied, and she sighed before placing the jug back on the table. Instead, she crouched down and flicked the pair in the foreheads simultaneously, which had them both jerk up in the same way that Kisami had before groaning and clutching their heads. "Up, you two. Clean-up to do." She told them. "Water's on the table."

"Thanks, Yams..." Yura and Ruka both replied in unison. The pair began dragging themselves up while Yamame moved around the room. I pushed the last lot of trays down to the end of the tables, then looked around. Orin and Okuu were still sleeping, but I wasn't sure if I should try waking them up since there was a fair chance that Orin would just attack me. The room was starting to sound like it was waking up now, with the musicians having muted conversation and Yura talking to Ruka and Yamame about the night as they drank some water and got up properly. "Hey, look at Nai." Ruka said, pointing at the still sleeping spider with the cup balanced on her head. "Anyone got a brush? We can draw on her face."

"Don't be so mean, Ruka." Yamame chided as she passed behind them, flicking some of her sister's hair over her eyes. Then, Yamame paused and rubbed her chin. "You can try and stack some more things on her head, though."

"Aw, I knew I could trust you, sister." Ruka dryly replied, grabbing a second sake cup from the stacks I'd created and kneeling down next to Nai. After a moment of deliberation, Yura joined her, a small laugh escaping her on the way.

Yamame joined me as Kisami started to go around the room and wake up the other Kurodani members, who all looked to have similarly awful hangovers. "They'll take a while to get moving, but I'm sure they'll have things sorted soon. D'you want to get going?" She whispered to me. Whispering back, I asked her if we needed to say goodbye. "Well...yeah. But Ki's planning on coming and kidnapping you again soon enough anyway, so I’m sure you’ve not seen the last of them for a long time." We kept the round of goodbyes short, just covering the sisters I personally knew, which meant getting jumped by Kisami and watching Yamame get jumped in turn, but the others all still seemed to be nursing heavy enough hangovers that they didn't do anything except light hugs and extracting promises to come and see everyone again soon.

And finally, we stepped outside. The air was no cooler and I still felt like I was about to pass out. I glanced over at Yamame, who didn't look much better. "I think I need to sleep for a day. A full day." She told me, and I nodded. "Really wish we'd left some food for today..." I knew how she felt because I was thinking the same. All the meat had been gone and what remained was rice, which was good, but not the kind of thing you needed for a hangover. Grasping at straws, I asked her if she had any secret family recipes for hangovers. "There's one that Kisami swears always works, but she won't tell me because I have 'to learn the consequences of my own actions', whatever that means. Personally, I think the consequences of her actions are going to be me, hungover, strangling her."

I snorted and offered her my hand as we started to head through the streets. I had no concept of time underground. It didn't seem to bother anyone else, and I imagined that there was some way of knowing that I wasn't aware of, but I had no clue if it was early in the morning or late at night, but the streets were fairly empty, which fit my impression of it being early in the morning. The only people we saw as we stumbled through were youkai setting up their shops and doing some early morning preparations, and all seemed about as peaceful as things got for the Hot Springs Town.

And then the first obstacle came up. There was a woman leaning on a wall, watching the path that Yamame and I was coming down. She spotted us and I heard Yamame curse under her breath. "Too hungover for this..." She muttered to me. I looked back up at the woman. Tall, purple hair, wearing a burgundy kimono with a yellow scarf connected loosely with a small ornament of a shimenawa, and a small bracelet with what looked like another ornament connected to it, this one a tiny maple leaf. Her kimono itself had similar maple leaf patterns sewn into it. She looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place her. I felt like I'd seen her in Geidontei once.

"Kurodani!" The woman said, her voice booming and very commanding in presence. "How lovely to see you." Oh, that was curious. As she got closer, her voice changed almost entirely, becoming something calmer and more like what I would hear in Geidontei. Now I was certain that I had seen her there once before. "And your..." She cast an eye up and down me, stopping momentarily at my shirt, which made me wish I'd picked something a little less conspicuous, "Human. Is this...?"

"Er, yes. He's the one." Yamame replied, still looking entirely wiped out. She introduced us. "This is Kanako Yasaka, the goddess of the Moriya Shrine." That made me freeze up. The goddess of the Moriya Shrine? Here? I looked up at her, because she towered above me and her posture was as solid as rock. "Hi." She mumbled back. I echoed the sentiment with as much politeness as I could muster, which at this moment was very little.

"So, you're here together?" Kanako continued. "Very good, very good!" She came closer, then laid a hand on Yamame's shoulder. "I take it my advice was helpful?" She asked, a knowing sort of smile on her face. I looked at Yamame, who looked back at me with bleary eyes. I wasn't sure either of us were mentally or physically equipped for this conversation at the moment.

"Er, yep. Totally. Definitely useful." Yamame replied, sounding about as unconvincing as it was possible to be. Kanako Yasaka, it seemed, did not pick up on this, because she let out a full bellied laugh and got a wide, smug-looking smile upon her face. I supposed that trying to explain that her advice had nearly tanked our relationship before it had even gotten started would do no good, so I smiled and nodded, even if it wasn't a very convincing smile and the nodding just made my head pound even more. "S-So, um, thanks. For your advice."

"Of course, of course!" Kanako told us with far too much cheer for anyone at this time of day, even if I had no idea what time of day it was. "You can come to me whenever you need advice, my dear little spider." Yamame's eye twitched. It was minute and I could tell that Kanako hadn't noticed it, but I had. "So, tell me. What have you been up? Is there anything you wish to discuss with me?" I had a feeling I knew what was going on here. The goddess of the Moriya Shrine was asking Yamame what she'd been up to, but she was doing it like she was speaking to a worshipper at her shrine. "You can tell me anything, after all."

"Uh-" Yamame began, but was cut off by something green, white and blue bursting out of the alley in-between us. "Lady Kanako! Lady Kanako, I found out that there's been a human running around down here! We should-" The green thing froze, revealing itself to be a girl with green, curly hair that stuck up like a bell pepper at the top and hung down over her left shoulder where a snake ornament was wrapped around it. Her outfit was something not too far from Reimu's, for a Shrine Maiden. In her hand, she clutched a gohei with a straight strip of paper at the end. She'd been running because she was panting for breath.

I wasn't sure I liked the way she was now staring at me. And I knew exactly who she was. Miss Sanae Kochiya. The Shrine Maiden of the Moriya Shrine. "Wait, hang on...You're..." She took a step closer. "You're that guy! The one with the - The..." She looked at my chest - At the T-shirt that I was starting to regret ever recovering from Koishi. "The freaky T-Shirt weirdo's freaky T-shirt buyer!" She cried, pointing the gohei at me and bursting into laughter.

I found myself a little taken back and not really sure how to respond to Miss Sanae pointing at me and laughing, but it turned out that I didn't have to, because Kanako stepped out behind Miss Sanae and slapped her in the back of the head. "Sanae, don't be rude. Apologize. Now." Miss Sanae looked behind her at Kanako, then turned back to me, her eyes still watering slightly.

"S...Sorry." She finally managed to say, and she did bow a little, so I decided to let her off the hook. "D-Did you really buy that?" She then asked at speed. I shook my head and said that Lady Hecatia had given it to me as a gift. "Really...?" Miss Sanae asked with a frown. "Right. Yeah. Er, sorry." She bowed again, slightly more sincerely this time, then turned to Kanako. "Lady Kanako, the oni down there said that there's been a human wandering around here recently, so..." She trailed off, then looked at me. She looked between me, Kanako, and Yamame several times. "Oh. I guess it's him." She spoke. "And he's - Wait, what...?" She was taking special interest in me now. And slowly, even though I knew it was coming, her eyes came across mine and Yamame's intertwined hands. "Oh. Oh-hoh!" She got even closer, looking at me and Yamame in turn. "You two?" Then a look of suspicion came over her face. "You're not controlling him, are you? Maybe I should-" She was raising the gohei, so I went to pull Yamame away, but Kanako slapped Miss Sanae again. "Ouch! Lady Kanako, please stop hitting me!" She cried, holding her head.

"Leave these two alone, Sanae." Kanako said sharply. "They're some of my finest work." I exchanged a glance with Yamame then, and she shrugged. I supposed that we weren't looking to destroy Kanako's fantasies of having been a matchmaker. I didn't think I had the mental capacity at the moment to think it through any further, regardless. "Now, Yamame - I may call you Yamame, yes?" Slowly, Yamame nodded. "Excellent! Now, Yamame, I'd like to speak to that excellent sister of yours who's in charge of your whole project. Raiko? I want to see if she wants any help with the last phases of the project."

"Er, Reiko, I think you mean." Yamame replied. "Don't know where she is, though. There was, uh...A thing, last night." I wasn't entirely sure if she'd not wanted to explain the party, of if she'd just forgotten the word 'party' entirely. Considering our hangovers, I could have seen it being either one. "Sorry."

Kanako laughed a little. Miss Sanae looked up at her, then at Yamame with some confusion. She looked at me and just about managed to keep her eyes from flickering down to the T-shirt that I was absolutely throwing in a corner as soon as Yamame and I got home. "Not to worry, not to worry, I'm sure we can manage. Isn't that right, Sanae?"

"Huh?" Miss Sanae blankly looked at her. "Oh! Yep, we'll be fine." She nodded.

"Now, where's Suwako got to?" Kanako asked, looking around. "I spoke to her earlier..." While she asked Miss Sanae, I frowned. Suwako? Like, the Suwako Moriya I'd met just earlier? What a strange coincidence for there to be two people called Suwako Moriya in the underground at once.
Somehow, Yamame seemed to know what I was thinking because she turned and slapped my arm. "Same person." She muttered. I looked back at her with a frown. That didn't sound right. I couldn't pre-judge. What if they'd turned out to be two people who hated each other?

"Ah~" I heard the voice come from behind Yamame and I, heading in our direction. "Well, I've had a lot of fun. You missed a good old-fashioned party, Sanae..." The voice passed next to me, and I was amazed to see that it was indeed the same person I'd been speaking to earlier. Well, unless she had a twin, but that was seeming even more unlikely. I had to actively work to keep my jaw from dropping in surprise. The world could be so strange sometimes. She looked over at Yamame and I. "I Told you that I'd be seeing you again." Suwako said to me. "But I'd wager you didn't think it would be so soon, did you?" I shook my head. "Well, that's what you get on a business trip like this."

"Wait, is that where you were all night, Lady Suwako? A party!?" Miss Sanae asked, looking slightly scandalised. "You shouldn't be going to parties like that! What if they-"

"Sanae." Suwako's voice still had that air to it. That danger. It wasn't in Kanako's voice, but Suwako effortlessly pulled it off. "If you didn't come, you don't get to complain." She cupped a hand to her ear. "What's that? Oh, you didn't come." Miss Sanae looked a little defeated at those words. "But that's okay. If it isn't your thing, then it isn't your thing." Suwako nodded cheerfully. "But you don't get to criticize me, alright?" I was starting to feel like I was caught in some sort of odd family drama, and I'd just come from a massive family party, so the whole thing was making my head spin a little. My head was already spinning far worse from the hangover, though, so I really could stand to skip all of this. Suwako turned to Yamame and I. "So, it seems that we must take our leave if our Kanako is to ever conclude her business here, and I'm all too sure that you have better things to do than stand around listening to Sanae's nonsense."

"Hey, Lady Suwako!" Miss Sanae cried with a frown. "That's not fair, I was just-"

"And," Suwako loudly continued, cutting Miss Sanae off, "I'm sure you're desperate to get going." Here, Suwako leaned in and whispered something I just barely made out. "And recover from that hangover." She stepped back. "So, we'll be off. Goodbye, Kurodani and not-Kurodani." She bowed, and after a moment, Kanako did the same. Finally, looking confused and a little put out, Miss Sanae did too.

"And remember," Kanako said as they got ready to leave, "You can always tell me anything, Yamame. The both of you, in fact." She smiled in a way that I imagined was supposed to be encouraging but felt just a little bit like it was begging. Then, the trio passed, and I heard Kanako and Suwako reprimanding Miss Sanae for her comments as they disappeared down the street.

Yamame looked at me, a sheen of sweat on her face as she undid the top button of her shirt. "Out of curiosity, does your headache feel better or worse?" Worse, I replied. A lot worse. "Yeah." Yamame mumbled, looking down dejectedly. "Mine too."

But surely, I thought as I swapped holding Yamame's hand for slinging my arm over her shoulders, nothing weirder could happen, could it? I needed to collect my coat on the way back, but that little detour definitely couldn't lead to any other weird conversations while both Yamame and I felt like death warmed up.

Really, what was the worst that could happen?

Female gorilla Kanako is best Kanako

>>45423247
>Really, what was the worst that could happen?
"I will now kidnap my nemesis' new friend for my revenge plan"

>>45423237
>Yamame seemed to know what I was thinking because she turned and slapped my arm. "Same person."
lol

>>45423227
when I saw the pic first I thought it was satori, writeanon fools me again

>>45423592
You can't say she doesn't know what he's like

>>45423247
>Really, what was the worst that could happen?
Cousin! It's been a while! Let's go bowling!

>>45410066
>>45422047
I appreciate you both, AI anons, and I love Yams' family so much

Poor Kanako, I hope she doesn't embarrass herself further with the rest of the Kurodani family.

>>45423247
Part of me was hoping that Anon would suddenly feel the urge to throw up during his encounter with the mountain gods. But then again, that'd probably turn things violent real quick.
Unless Sanae happened to end up as the one person covered in vomit, that is. Kanako and Suwako would totally say that she had it coming.

>>45425426
Kanako would laugh it off and think of it as anon being too nervous in the presence of a mighty god such as her

I'm sorry, writefriend... This is what happens when I get an idea stuck in my head. I would like to say it's not my fault, but I'm ready to take it on the chin.

In other words, I made some Kisami porn today.

https://files.catbox.moe/xuyodl.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/icopw2.jpg

45427716
>I
>made

>>45427724
fail

>>45427716
If she drugged anon this implies that he was already in pyjamas or that Kisami put him into them after drugging him.

>>45427716
Eeh, i don't think she would go that far, or at least i want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

>>45427761
This is a fanon kisami

>>45427716
Is...is this a reference to that Oglaf comic?

>>45427716
>>45422047
>>45410066
I'm quite flattered that people have taken to Kisami enough to generate pictures of her, actually
Poor Yams can't leave her human alone for a second

>>45427787
You made a fun character

>>45427787
Seriously though imagine how traumatic it would be for both Anon and her. Such betrayal like that is not easily forgiven.

>>45428215
>Seriously
My nonsense isn't supposed to be taken seriously. It's just a silly H-manga scenario. Moreover, I imagine Yam subsequently took advantage of pre-paralysed prey and had her sister sit by idly as punishment, so they're even.
>>45427785
I did have that in mind! Albeit, since our bachelo-- er, Casanonova is impervious to bites, my mental picture was that the toxin in this case had been delivered via the mouth. If you take my meaning.

>>45427716
>like
>fault

>>45422074
I wanted to respond earlier, but I can only post from university wifi. Yes, >>45422089 is correct. It's a pretty funny image even if I don't understand exactly why someone would make it lol

>>45428460
>our bachelo-- er, Casanonova
Y'know, I always found it interesting how no one was fawning over him until after he had already found a relationship. That's how it tends to go in life: you put in a gargantuan of effort to get something done, and only after you finally accomplish it does everything that would have made your life much easier fall into place. Although I doubt a relationship with any of those admirers would have ended well, the effort clearly paid off.

Nonetheless, I prefer the earlier depiction. There was more significance when someone fell in love with him, and it led credence to the interpretation that his looks didn't especially stand out and there were additional reasons to love him. It's all fairly moot since this detail only came up after he was committed to Yamame, and now that I think about it, introducing others who lust after him strengthens his characterization as being humble and faithful. But still, I find the change somewhat undermines those earlier developments.

>>45422089
>>45429970
No worries, I also have a dynamic IP that gets rangebanned sometime. Funny that your university wifi got off the hook, I'd expect places like that to be the first ones to get banned.
But thanks.

>>45430058
Homewreckers love married men

>>45423247
>Really, what was the worst that could happen?

All these mentions of nonhuman musicians left me wondering if the Prismrivers will perform at Anon's wedding.

>>45430448
they sort of owe him a favor after getting him crushed by 300 pounds of fat jizo ass

>>45430448
I mean it could be them or the Tsukumo sisters or Mystia and Kyouko, considering it was an underworld party i'm leaning more towards the last one.

"I think I might throw up." Yamame suddenly announced to me in just about the calmest voice I'd ever heard. "Probably soon." She looked very pale, yes, but I asked her how exactly she'd reached that conclusion. "Funny feeling in my stomach. And I'm incredibly hungover. I guess that peach in you lets you cheat your way out of throwing up from drinking too much." I wasn't too sure about that, because I definitely didn't feel well, but I didn't have that sort of queasy feeling in my stomach that usually preceded me throwing up from a hangover. Patting Yamame on the back, I said that maybe the peach was just delaying the reaction and I'd be feeling just as bad as she did soon enough. It wasn't like my head had stopped hurting, anyway. "Can we...Uh, find a back alley or something?"

We'd barely made any progress down the street after the impromptu comedy show courtesy of the Moriya Shrine. The trio had only just about disappeared from sight when Yamame had made her announcement, and since I wasn't much desiring Yamame throwing up in the middle of the street, I nodded and led her down the first proper alley I could find. It turned out to be the back of a restaurant that hadn't opened yet and as such, was empty, quiet, and hidden enough from the main street that no one would see us. Unfortunately, it seemed that the town was beginning to wake up, because there was significantly more background noise in general then there had been when we'd left the hall. Still, there was a large box to sit on, and I could see steam wafting through the space between the two buildings above us. The whole thing felt just a little seedy, but sometimes you just had to do what you had to do.

So, I sat on the box, slightly hunched over, with my arms resting on my legs. Yamame leaned against the wall, her arms wrapped around her stomach and a queasy look on her face. I'd have liked to go and hug her, but I also wasn't particularly looking to get covered in vomit, so I was willing to respect that perhaps I would just have to wait until afterwards. "Those...Moriya lot." Yamame said suddenly. I looked over at her with a frown. "Oh, don't leave me sitting here silently. Anyway - Those Moriya lot. I don't know if you saw it, but they've got that reactor down here, right?" I'd heard it mentioned, I was fairly certain. "It's not too far off from the biggest spring." Yamame said, then clenched her jaw and her eyes for a moment. "No, I'm fine..." She mumbled when I looked at her with concern. "Er, anyway, they've got that reactor, and you can see it from the biggest spring." So?

"Well, you remember the, uh, coffee incident?" She looked at me a little sheepishly, and I could feel my cheeks heat up. Yes, I definitely remembered the coffee incident. I also remembered the follow-up coffee incident when she'd found out where I'd hidden her supply, and both had been equally taxing on my hydration levels. "They're the ones who gave us the supply." I raised an eyebrow. "That Kanako, she...I don't know, I think she was trying to ingratiate herself with us? I mean, I wasn't there. Reiko and Yura came up with them." I'd heard some of this story, told to me in panting, gasping breaths between Yamame wringing me for all I was worth. "Y-Yes, well, um, she apparently went around telling the girls in charge - So, Yura, Reiko, Kisami...You get the idea - how great a job they were doing and offered those as gifts. I guess she didn't want to look like she was doing nothing since she's got that reactor so close. I don't know, but that's probably why she's here again." Yamame shrugged. "She's a bit awkward." I could definitely agree with that. "But I think she means well." I expected so. She was a lot like Hearn in that way. Meaning well, but seemingly not quite getting the best way to go about things.

"And...What did that Sanae mean when she said-" And then Yamame stopped. Her eyes bulged a little and she began to snap her fingers repeatedly. And I'd seen enough hangovers in my life to know what that meant, so when she suddenly rushed over to the wall by the box that I was sitting on and bent her upper half forward, I was already trying to get out of the way.

And then she threw up, which is never a pleasant experience to see happen, let alone to happen to you, but I decided to do my best and pulled her hair back out of her face, then tried rubbing gentle circles into her back while she lost last night's dinner. It wasn't exactly big on dignity, or glamour, or anything particularly good in the world. But, well, I supposed that it was very relatable. Any human could sympathize with something like this. Yamame retched, her stomach empty, then gasped for breath. She looked up at me, her eyes streaming, a line of drool hanging from her mouth, looking like she would rather die than be alive for a second longer.

And I really knew that I was done for then, because even in that situation, I still thought she looked good. Well - Not good, because I didn't think anyone could look good after something like that, but it didn't make me feel anything less for her. "Ugh..." She groaned, gasping for breath again. "That was - The worst. Just...Bad." She mumbled, sniffling . She looked down for a moment, then spat before getting to work wiping her eyes. "I must look like a mess." I ran my fingers through her hair, sweeping it back and out of her eyes, then said that she was fine, and I couldn't imagine anyone who was hungover looked much better. "Ha." She replied dryly. "Thanks." She continue, smiling weakly. " I guess I do feel a bit better now. Headache's still there and I feel like I need to sleep for twenty hours, but...Yeah." I felt the urge to kiss her, but Yamame pressed a hand against my chest. "Maybe not until I've cleaned my mouth out." She told me, and I snorted.

We decided to vacate the alley as quickly as possible. "It's alright." Yamame told me. "Not the first ones to throw up around here. Probably not even the first ones in that alley. We're probably not even the first ones this week." That made this whole place sound a little more sordid, but I guessed that a whole town dedicated to drinking and hot springs could cause the place to be a little...lax. "They'll dump a bucket of water over it and think nothing of it. Not that it wouldn't have been better to do that somewhere private, but..." I got it. Wasn't exactly something you could schedule, and I was a little worried that I'd be next in line. "You need your coat, don't you?" Yamame was saying. I nodded, since I'd left it in the storeroom in the Kurodani building and had no idea what had happened to it. "Yeah, it's...Uh, down here." She continued, grabbing my hand and pulling me along no matter how much I complained about how my head still hurt.

Of course, I wasn't allowed to have good things without something going wrong, so we got within viewing distance of the street that would take us to the Kurodani building when we bumped into a soft, fluffy wall. Said wall stumbled forward, then spun, and suddenly I was staring into the business end of a cannon. I could even see a dimly glowing ball which was starting to grow brighter. "Okuu!" A voice sharply called. "Stop that." After a moment, the ball began to dissipate and I breathed a sigh of relief, especially when the cannon lowered and I caught my first look of the day at Utsuho Reiuji. She looked like she'd had a hangover too, if the way one arm was pressed against her head was any indication. "Now, what has run into you, hmm?" A heard footsteps as something passed around Okuu's massive wings and cape, which were what Yamame and I had crashed into in the first place. "It sounds like...Ah." The figure rounded the side of the cape and I felt my teeth begin to grind unconsciously, because there stood Satori Komeiji. "Well, now. It has been rather a while, hasn't it?" I opened my mouth and- "Yes, yes, you're upset with me for wanting to learn about your memories. Save me the headache - Oh, my, and you are experiencing quite the headache, aren't you? - and don't open your mouth." Satori told me with a dismissive wave. She hadn't changed, then. Still didn't really care about how it affected me as long as she got her ans- "And there you go again." Satori muttered, shaking her head as her third eye blinked at me. "This may come as a shock to you, but I do care. Exceedingly so, in fact. I know your hopes and fears with a look, and I know them as you know them. I feel them as you feel them." I didn't believe her. "And I didn't expect you to."

"Er, is there a conversation happening here?" Yamame asked, looking between Satori and I. "I think it would be a lot easier to understand if I could hear both sides of it."

"Yes, Yamame. Your human, as you like to call him," She called me that? That was adorable. "Hush. Stop thinking so loudly, you spider-obsessed idiot." Satori snapped at me. "As I was saying, your human is upset with me for unlocking his buried memories." Yeah, I was, and I was happy to show my displeasure- "Even though he's also thankful for having them. You humans are walking bundles of contradiction, aren't you?" Satori continued, giving me a sharp look. "Now, why don't we skip all of this? I am not, as you might wish, a nightmarish creature hell bent on your suffering, even if it would make it easier for you to hate me. I am hated enough already, thank you very much. No, I am here to pick up my two pets, who are usually rather adorable but are now as hungover as you are." Satori turned to Okuu, who was still holding a hand to her head and whining quietly in pain. "And do not think I missed you, Orin."

"Lady Satori must be mistaken." I heard the voice of Rin Kaenbyou mutter, but I couldn't see her anywhere. She sounded like she was coming from Okuu. "Her cutest pet kasha was quietly sleeping."

"No, dear me." Satori said, snapping her fingers in front of Okuu's face and pointing a finger at the ground. "Down, Okuu." The hell raven slowly - mirroring the way Yamame and I had been moving when we'd woken up - crouched down, and then I could see Orin, somehow nestled between her wings. "You were not sleeping, dear." She stroked Orin's hair, and the kasha looked pleased, even if she was also hungover. "You were watching in glee, thinking that you'd finally get the catch you've been waiting years for." The pleased look on Orin's face immediately disappeared. "Perhaps your hangover has made you forget your duties. Or perhaps you've forgotten the ultimate abilities I possess? Is a training session in order, my cute little kasha?"

"N-No, no, Lady Satori!" Orin frantically shook her head, then whined and clutched it with both hands. "I'm sorry..." She mumbled with a lot of pain in her voice.

"Um, Lady Satori...?" Okuu mumbled. "Can I get up now? My head hurts..."

"I know it does, dear." Satori told her, petting Okuu's head this time. "Get up. We'll be home soon." Okuu gratefully clambered to her feet.

"What, er..." Yamame whispered to me. "What's going on here...?" I shrugged and said that the Hot Springs Town must have been playing host to comedy acts recently.

"No, I am not a comedy act." Satori told me frostily. "Perhaps you and your spider - Yes, he calls you that - will understand one day in the future." I opened my mouth to reprimand her for revealing- "You will not be doing any reprimanding. And stop thinking about what I mean by what I say. You'll not understand, and it creates a rather distracting amount of background noise. Rather, you should practice not thinking. It would save me a great deal of trouble." Like Koishi, I thought, then felt rather surprised that I'd been allowed to finish the thought. "Koi-" I frowned. Satori had frozen. "Koishi?" She asked me slowly.

"Stupid human has upset Lady Satori." I heard Orin mutter, and when she spotted me glancing at her, she stuck her tongue out and pulled her eyelid down. "Stupid human deserves any punishment he receives." It seemed that her hangover was taking a toll on the way she spoke.

"Koishi Komeiji?" Satori asked me again, and I nodded slowly. "You've met her? You could see her!?" I slowly nodded again, but it had been a very weird meeting, so- "She was selling T-shirts in the human village? And she wants - Wants us to be...friends?" And there was the kicker. "I...See. And she's decided that you and she are friends now?" I- "Oh, I see. Well, then. I suppose I will simply have to extend the hand of friendship to you too, even if you don't believe it." Satori extended her arm, and I stared at it suspiciously. "You wouldn't want to upset my dear little sister, would you?" She asked me, and I realised that I really didn't have much of a choice, so I reached out and shook her hand. "There. That wasn't so difficult, was it?" It had- "It had been fairly difficult, hmm? Baby steps, then. Orin?"

"Lady Satori asks me the impossible." Orin grumbled, peeking over Okuu’s ribbon. "Her dear kasha cannot perform the impossible with a pounding head."

Okuu frowned, trying to look at Orin, which wasn't entirely possible since the kasha was clinging to Okuu's back. "Wait, so you can perform the impossible if-"

Satori decided to interrupt that particular conversation. "I'm not asking you to do to him what he does to his spider, you silly feline. Make that overt hate of yours a little less overt, please and thank you." Satori said, sounding a little tired. Wait, what I do to my spider? "Shut up." She told me yet again. "I'm tired because I'm dealing with four hungover fools instead of two, and two was already three more than I wanted to deal with. Now, please: Stop talking." She told me in a pleading tone before turning back to her pets.

"Are we ever getting out of here?" Yamame whispered to me. "What is it about you that draws all these distractions?" If I knew that, we'd already be in bed at home by now. "Is that a promise?" Yamame asked me with raised eyebrows.

"What?" Satori suddenly said, spinning around. "What are you-" She suddenly doubled over and put a hand on her head. "Oh no, no, this shall not do at all. Stop that!" She shouted, pointing a trembling finger at me. "Stop - Stop thinking! My word, is that all that goes through your head!? Yamame this, Yamame that, Yamame na- Gah!" Satori staggered back, slapping her eyes over her head. "This is what's wrong with you humans!" She cried. "Your lives are so short that you're thinking all these - The distracting, lewd thoughts all the time! Shut up!" To be honest, I hadn't expected to hear Satori go on an anti-human tirade today. "I wouldn't have to if you could just keep your thoughts to yourself, you spider-obsessed lunatic! Stop thinking! And you too, Yamame! Stop encouraging him!" She shook her head, looking very scandalised. "That's it. Orin, Okuu, we're leaving! Yamame and - and - you..." She ground out, glaring at me very harshly, "You will see me again." She growled, spinning on the heel of her slipper-covered foot, and storming off with both hands balled into fists. After a moment, Okuu staggered after her, with both her and Orin complaining about their sore heads.

Yamame and I stood there, and I imagined that we were both wondering if this would happen anymore. Then, we turned to each other, and both tried to ask a question at the same time. "Do you really call me your spider?" She asked right as I asked if she really called me her human. Then, we just stared at each other. I, er, had only started consciously doing it recently, I supposed. "I think I've been doing it for a while..." Yamame confessed. "Do you, um, want me to stop?" I thought that it was quite sweet, actually. "Yeah...I think it's sweet too, you romantic." She teased, elbowing me in the side. I flipped her hair down into her face, saying that she was just as bad as me in that case. She broke into giggles, and I barely lasted any longer before I was laughing too.

When we finally got ourselves under control, I said that we should probably go and retrieve my coat before something even stupider happened. "Oh, just you wait. We'll bump into everyone there. I mean it. Everyone!" Yamame told me as we finally got moving again. "Ki will try and jump on us again, and I'll really strangle her this time if she doesn't tell me how to get rid of this damned hangover." She continued to prophesize as we headed down the street.

But thankfully, the building looked all quiet. Which I didn't trust given my recent luck, but even so, once we'd stepped inside, it was still quiet. We retrieved my coat from the storage room where I'd left it in silence. We stepped back outside of the room in silence.

And there was Reiko, her arms crossed and staring at us. Both Yamame and I jumped in fright. "You two look awful." She said bluntly. "That's why you don't get drunk on oni sake, dear sister." She shook her head in exasperation. "We'll get no work out of anyone for the rest of the week, now."

"And where have you been, Rei?" Yamame asked curiously. "I know you didn't drink, so what have you been up to while the rest of us have been staggering around clutching our heads?"

"Oh, nothing much, Yams. Just keeping the project running." She shrugged. "Still deciding on a good punishment for Yura." Reiko eyed me. "And I would punish you, but you don't actually work with us, so I can't properly punish you. Therefore, I'm going to punish Yams in your place."

"Hey!" Yamame cried. "What did I do!?" She crossed her arms and glared at Reiko. "You're rather mean this morning, sister." She said with a slightly saddened expression, which I could already tell was being exaggerated. The hangover was really taking a toll on our acting skills, it seemed.

"Everyone's hungover and I'm stuck here on my own, Yams. It's a little depressing, especially since the project isn’t actually done yet." Reiko sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Fine, your punishment is...I'll send Kisami up to you every day for a week."

"Wh-What!?" Yamame cried, looking horrified. To be honest, I was a little scared of the idea of being subjected to her hugs and kisses on a daily basis too. "That's way too cruel! She'll always show up at the most inconvenient times, too!"

"Desperate times, Yams." Reiko said sharply, showing no mercy. "If I can't punish him," She pointed a finger in my face, "Then I'll punish you in order to punish him. Now, are you two off?" She looked down toward the door to the building. “Not that I’m trying to rush you out.”

"Er, yes, we both wanted to get home." Yamame grumbled, looking a bit put out by the whole punishment plan. "Can you at least give us a couple days before you send Ki up?" She pouted, but despite the hugs and kisses, I liked Ki, so I wasn’t all that upset about the prospect other than that.

"I think I can arrange that, dear sister." Reiko told us, sounding a little less annoyed and a bit more warm now. "You'll come back and see us soon, I hope?" She asked, taking the opportunity to envelop Yamame in a hug. I took initiative that time and said that we'd probably end up back down here before long anyway, but halfway through saying it, Reiko turned and gave me a gentle hug too. It was very different to Kisami's attacks, that was for sure. "Now, you'd best be off before everyone else shows up and drags you into another round of hugs." She took the opportunity to ruffle Yamame's hair once more despite her complaints. "We'll hope to see you both soon." She smiled, waved, and disappeared back up the stairs.

"I am - So - sick of that hair thing!" Yamame fumed, dragging me by the wrist back out of the door before anyone could show up. "Why do you all do it so much!?" I shrugged and said that it felt really nice. I could try giving her a head massage, if she wanted. "Oh, don't you - Wait, a massage? Ooh, I changed my mind. You can do that. Er, once we get home."

At this point, I was starting to wonder if that statement was more of an 'if' than a 'when'.

>>45431860
Satorin bullying is always so fun, I can't believe Orin is such a lewd cat

>>45431860
>"You will see me again."
She must really love her sister to do this

*SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*
"You! Stop right there you sneaky little spider!"
"Asking to eat my students was one thing! But to lure humans to you by using their lust it's on another level! At this rate you will become a succubus if i don't stop you!"

>>45432073
She just desperately wants friends and uses her sister as an excuse because she doesn't want to admit it

"Mmh? Oh i don't need anything from either of you, i just felt like anoying someone hahahahahaha......hah....."
"Have you two seen a girl with long purple hair and a horn coming out of her forehead?
Very dumpy
Can't tell what time of the day is
Kind of smells like instant noodles
I haven't been able to find her for a few months and i'm...i-i'm starting to get a bit worried

>>45432162
Poor Yuuma probably thinks that Chiyari wasn't satisfied with the Gouyoku's policy of free taotis hugs

>>45431815
I wonder what timezone writer-sama is from. This was posted at 23:56 at my country and he usually posts at this time.

>>45432329
I'm gonna guess GMT. I believe in one of the early threads, he mentioned writing one of the chapters at 3am. Assuming he posts as soon as he finishes, then that pretty much aligns with when he typically posts, if I'm calculating the offset correctly.

>>45431860
I want to think about my mixtape 24/7 near Satori until she politely asks me to stop

>>45432420
You know how you get a song stuck in your head for hours but its only a catchy portion and the only way to silence it is another equally catchy tune?
24/7 till satorin is forced to interact with me

I don’t know why but the idea of chasing Satori around thinking lewd thoughts about her seems hilarious to me. Although it would only last and end very badly when you eventually end up chasing her back to one of her pets that don’t take kindly to it.

>>45432469
That's why you keep it to annoying her with songs, she can't retort with aggression to that, just thinking about songs.

How would Satori react to the voices in my head that keep telling me to hurt my family?

>>45432761
Shed smugly laugh at how weak human minds are

>>45432761
She'd act smug over how you can't even control your own thoughts and privately she would be scared that there is another youkai that can enter minds.

>>45432394
>he mentioned writing one of the chapters at 3am
this man is crazy

>>45432117
But making humans and youkai marry is her goal

>>45437168
She just sort of skimmed over Murasa's reports and assumed the worst.

>>45431845
>I suppose I will simply have to extend the hand of friendship to you too, even if you don't believe it." Satori extended her arm
and you guys saying she was impossible to fix

>>45438139
she's only doing it because of koishi, and she still lords it over him because she can read his mind
she doesn't actually think she's done anything wrong and I doubt anon's actually rushing to be friends with her

"It'll be some oni challenging you to a fight." I shook my head. No, I thought it would be Kisami walking around every corner inexplicably from here all the way up to Yamame's house, where Kisami would turn out to already be taking a nap in her bed. It just seemed like that kind of day. "Ugh, that'd be a pain. I love her, really, but she'd be doing nothing but teasing me if she did that. Honestly, she'd probably even ask if we could all sleep together." I couldn't help but pity whatever poor man had to sleep with Kisami. "Really? Why?" He'd probably be strangled by her hair. I'd almost done the same that morning when I'd woken up with her hair all over my face. "Heh. Yeah, you're right. You'd have to tie her hair back if you wanted to survive." I asked Yamame if she'd ever slept in the same bed as Kisami when she was growing up. "Er...M-Maybe?" Thinking back to when Kisami had mentioned a young Yamame running to her in the middle of the night, I asked Yamame if she'd been having a nightmare. "Oh, fine. Yes, once or twice. Her hair wasn't quite so long then. It was more...Shoulder length, but so frizzy that it looked like she'd been struck by lightning." I was struggling to imagine that, since Kisami's long hair was so striking that I wasn't sure it could be any different. "I think she was going through a phase."

We'd been lucky enough to avoid running into anyone for at least the last four streets since leaving the Kurodani building. It was practically unparalleled amounts of progress, which I was very pleased about since I still felt awful. Yamame looked like she was exhausted, with some dark shadows starting to appear under her eyes. She was constantly squinting, too, like she was struggling to keep her eyes open. Still, it seemed that she'd recovered a little thanks to her little incident in that back alley. I usually felt better once I'd finally thrown up, but the peach seemed to be keeping it from happening which wasn't doing me any favours. I just hoped our luck with keeping out of weird encounters could hold out for a little longer.

But, of course, my luck went and counteracted that, because I felt a hand land on my shoulder and roughly spin me around, which in my current state was enough to make me lose balance and tip forward. "Hey, glad to see you're- Whoa!" The voice told me as I stumbled forward and landed face-first on something soft. I groaned as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to keep myself upright until the world stopped spinning, which was easier when I felt a pair of hands enclose my shoulders and hold me upright. I pushed my hands against whatever I'd fallen into so I could try and get myself upright properly. "U-Um, are you, er, well? Y-You just - your hands- M-My chest..." Squinting and hoping that either the headache or my life would end, I tried to see what I was doing.

Ah, I thought. It appeared that my hands were sinking into the ample chest of a madly-blushing Yuugi Hoshiguma. And she looked like her head was about to blow up, because her face was even redder than Kisami's hair. After a moment, my body caught up with my mind and I stumbled backwards until Yamame managed to catch me before I tripped and cracked my head on the floor. "O-Oh," Yamame exclaimed, steadying me. "I was wondering where you had gotten to." She brushed my shoulders as if there was some dust on them. "You weren't there when we woke up." She nodded at me and patted me on the back.

"W-Well, um, no. W-We left to carry on the p-party once everyone started falling asleep." Yuugi breathed in deeply and nodded shakily, trying to get herself back under control. I offered an apology for grabbing her like that. "G-Good! I mean, er, thank you. I-I should've been a bit gentler..." Yuugi was starting to calm down, I thought. Then, I noticed that behind her, off to the side, were Raki and Lady Kasen. Raki looked at me, then cast her gaze to the side, and I saw Lady Kasen look over at her, then frown in sympathy. "S-So, you look like you're..." She vaguely gestured at my face, and I wondered just how badly I'd interrupted her train of thought.

"Dying?" Yamame supplied dryly. "I think we both feel like it." I slowly nodded as I tried to keep my brain from tearing itself from my skull. I wasn't sure how much longer I had left in me before I collapsed altogether. The steam of the Hot Spring Town was sapping all of my energy and focus.

"Ah, that's probably from the drinking game..." Yuugi muttered, nodding as she took a sip from her sake dish and shrugged then looked at both Yamame and I, since we were staring at her. "What?"

"Drinking...game?" Yamame asked tentatively. I echoed the question, which made Yuugi look between the two of us in confusion, and caused the two Ibaraki's behind her to look at each other and whisper something between them that I couldn't hear. "Oh, we didn't, did we...?"

"You really don't remember?" Yuugi asked us blankly. "Seriously?" We both shook our heads. "Huh. Well, about halfway through the night, we started to notice that he," She pointed at me, "Wasn't anywhere near as drunk as he should be for someone drinking oni alcohol." I guessed that the peach had something to do with that. "So, We challenged him to a little drinking game, and he accepted." I didn't remember that bit.

"That sounds like something you'd do." Yamame grumbled to me, and I scratched my head and nodded sheepishly. I supposed that it did, which probably said something negative about me, but I wasn't looking to consider that sort of thing while I was hungover.

At that point, Raki and Lady Kasen joined Yuugi. "And then, he kept up with us for an impressively long time." Lady Kasen said. "Far longer than most humans could. Even Reimu couldn't out-drink him." That, I said, sounded like high praise.

Raki looked up. "For humans? Definitely." She leaned an arm on Lady Kasen's shoulder. "But you're still no oni, so we won in the end." I guess that explained why I was so hungover despite the peach, which I'd thought would protect me from this sort of thing. Perhaps I'd have to complain to Tenshi, if we ever made it back to the surface. Raki then stepped forward, slightly hesitantly, before clenching her fists and coming to stand in front of me. "Listen." She said quietly, her eyes flicking to Yamame behind me. "I need to apologize." Behind her, I saw Lady Kasen pull Yuugi over and begin talking to her. "What I did - I...Shouldn't have done it." Slowly, I nodded and said that it had been a little much. "It was more. Look, I - I'm fighting a thousand years of natural instincts every single day." I understood. It was a hard thing to do, but I was happy that she'd come and apologised. "...Yeah. It felt like..." She trailed off for a moment, then looked over her shoulder at Lady Kasen, who was talking animatedly to Yuugi.

When she turned back, her eyes again flickered to Yamame. "There's people I don't want to let down, now." I hadn't really blamed Raki for what she'd almost done, because I'd already seen that enough proof that she was trying her best, so I decided to take a risk and prove to her that I was still on her side. So, I opened my arms. "You're - Er...?" Raki mumbled, looking at me in confusion. I tried to give her an encouraging smile, which I imagine didn't look amazing considering my current state, but after a moment of hesitation, Raki awkwardly stepped in and let me wrap my arms around her. A few more moments, and she reciprocated, thought she did it gingerly as if she was afraid of squeezing too hard. I supposed that was because of her doing it too hard to Yamame. "Thank you." She mumbled, and a moment later, we separated. Lady Kasen and Yuugi were watching, the former with a slight smile. "That feels - Better."

Lady Kasen cleared her throat. "C'mon, partner. Time we were off." They were leaving? "Yes. It's been a lot of fun down here, but I've been neglecting both my own training and my partner's. Speaking of which, what about you? Are you still training?" I mumbled something quietly, and Lady Kasen sighed and shook her head. "Just like Reimu. Honestly...Fine, I'd like you to come by whenever you feel ready." I nodded, since I liked Lady Kasen's senkai. I had no clue when I'd be able to get there, though. Especially with Kisami coming back up for me sometime soon. Raki re-joined Lady Kasen, and the two waved a goodbye to Yamame and I before slipping off down a side street.

Yuugi cleared her throat. "Suika's disappeared. Probably already slipped off back to the surface. She does that sort of thing sometimes. I'll be heading back off home now, but you know that you're welcome back here at any time." Yamame and I nodded gratefully. "And, Yamame?"

My spider looked up. "Huh? Er, sorry, what is it?"

"We never got to have another game of hanafuda. I'd like to see you down here again soon, for that reason if no other." Yuugi smirked, taking another drink from her dish. "But I guess that'll have to wait." She turned, waving her free hand at us. "Until next time, you two." And off she went. Finally, we were alone once more.

"That was better than the last few encounters." Yamame commented. "Didn't overstay their welcome, didn't spout nonsense, didn't threaten us. I knew I could count on oni to be straightforward." She grabbed my hand and began pulling me along. "Let's get out of here before...I don't know, The Gouyouku Alliance shows up." The who? "Oh, er, never mind." I frowned in confusion, but managed to get Yamame to stop pulling me and let me walk normally. "Miss Raki seemed better." Yamame commented, finally slowed down. "I was a little bit worried." I thought that she was probably still going through a lot. "Yeah. But she came an apologized. I never told her to do that, so she must have decided to do it herself. That's change, isn't it?" It was, and I was proud of her. "I wonder if she'll-" Yamame stopped talking suddenly, and when I looked at her, she was staring off into the distance. "Oh...That's just unfair..." She mumbled. I frowned and asked her what was wrong. "Look." She got closer to me, then pointed at the wall of the cavern. I followed her finger, squinting, then saw it. The tunnel we'd entered from had collapsed. "Must have been some drunk oni squabble..." Yamame muttered, then cursed under her breath. "They'll have it cleared eventually, but..."

Were we stuck here? "...No. No, that's only the fifth-largest tunnel to the Hot Springs Town. We'll have to take the path back to the Old City and leave through there..." Did I still have to hide my face and pretend I was no one there? "Well...Probably. They're laxer here in the Hot Springs Town. It's best if you keep a low profile there." I sighed since even getting back home was turning into quite an endeavour, then agreed. It wasn't like we really had much choice. "...Alright. Let's go, quickly, or we'll never get out of here."

Fortunately, there was a long, winding path that ran between the Hot Springs Town and the Old City, and it let us out on the outskirts of the city, which was already near the way out that Yamame had mentioned. I barely even had to keep my head down, and in what seemed like no time at all, we were ascended the roughly carved stone staircase cut into the rock. "That went...suspiciously well." Yamame told me as she led me into the tunnel. "Which means that something is going to - Oh." She paused, then slapped her forehead. "Oh, I forgot..." She whined to herself. I looked ahead, trying to figure out what she was worried about, and then I saw the red railings and long wooden slats of a bridge. And more importantly, I saw the figure standing in the centre of the bridge, her arms crossed. Even from here, I could see the sharpness of her eyes, which glowed with a powerful green, like dark moss. "Of course, she's out now. Who else?" Yamame whispered. "Alright, keep your wits about you." My spider told me urgently. "You'll probably start feeling heightened envy and jealousy, but if she's out, she's probably feeling better at the moment, so it shouldn't be too bad."

And Yamame led me out onto the bridge, like she knew what was best for me because she was the clever youkai, the selfis- I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. She hadn't been lying, the feelings were intense and almost overpowering, but I knew what I was in for, so I could push past them. After a few moments of focusing on my breathing, I felt better.

"Kurodani." Her voice was smooth, almost sounding chipper, but there was just the slightest undertone of something darker. Something scratchy and husky. I looked over her. Blonde hair, a darker shade than Yamame's. Her ears were curiously pointed, almost like a tengu's. Her expression was, just like her voice, almost happy, with a wide, warm smile and a slight blush, but the intensity in her eyes made me wonder how much of it was real. She wore a scarf that looked white with a very faint pink tint to it. Her outfit wasn't quite like any clothing I'd ever seen, from humans or youkai. The top looked like a light brown shirt with borders on the sleeves and front with crisscrossing white on purple, and it went underneath her waist, which had something blue tied around it with large white strips of cloth the same colour as her scarf. Underneath the shirt-thing, she had a black skirt with strange red strings hanging off of it. On her arms were large, puffy arm warmers, and she seemed to be wearing a black vest underneath the shirt, though I wondered if the skirt was actually part of a sleeveless dress.

"Parsee, how are you?" Yamame asked, sounding fairly familiar with the girl. "May we pass?" She sounded fairly hopeful that the answer would be yes, which - in my experience - usually indicated that the answer would be no.

"Ah, how envious I am...That you can pass through this place with company so easily." Parsee continued, stalking toward us. Yamame edged in front of me, gently putting a hand on my chest and pushing me back slightly. "You came from the Old City. To see such sights...I'm even more jealous." Her eyes were glowing, the green almost sickly. I found it almost overpowering, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut again and back away. "I'm jealous of you, who can be affected by my powers."

"Er, yes. I'm glad you're feeling well." Yamame said slowly. "We just want to go home." She gestured in the direction of the other side of the bridge.

"Home!" Parsee hissed, spinning and bending down to stare directly at Yamame. "To go home! To have a real home - A home of more than just a faded old bridge. Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy!" Parsee growled at Yamame, before stepping back. "You'd best go back. Where the enviable cold air of the surface world can reach you."

"Really?" Yamame asked, looking a little taken back. "Just like that? Er, thanks?"

"Of course." Parsee said, smiling widely and innocently. "I've nothing against you." She stepped to the side, bowed and used her other hand to gesture for us to pass.

Yamame watched her for a moment, then stepped back over to me and hauled me along. "Walk quickly. She's never this nice." She harshly whispered to me. "Be prepared to run." I didn't much like the sound of that last bit, but for all the worry that there had been about crossing this bridge, it seemed to be going okay. And then, we passed Parsee, and suddenly Yamame shoved me to the side just in time for a bolt of danmaku to pass by where I had just been. I spun to look at Parsee, who was smiling just as innocently as she raised her hand, a growing ball of green light visible. "I knew it." Yamame muttered.

"I've nothing against you." Parsee repeated, her smile widening even further. "But I can make up plenty of reasons to attack you." She said, hurling the new ball at me. I yelped and dived out of the way. Yamame yelled at me to run, then began to fire back while I sprinted to the end of the bridge and hid behind one of its columns. The battle was short, but seemed fairly intense. The pair took to the air, and after a few minutes and a lot of light, I saw Parsee spinning away, falling off the side of the bridge. Yamame was ahead of her, and I heard the sound that I associated with her using her webs.

"Okay!" She called. "Come over to the side of the bridge!" Cautiously, I stepped out over to the red barrier that prevented me from falling off the edge. I looked down, then blinked. Yamame was standing on a small outcrop that jutted out just above the water. Above her was Parsee. She was suspended in the air, held in place by what seemed like hundreds of strands of web. They left her hopelessly entangled, and she couldn't even turn her head properly. "I, er, may have gotten overzealous." Yamame told me. "I'll need to get her out of this now. Yeah, I know." She continued, seeing my look of disappointment. It'd be even longer before we got back home now. Sighing, I came around to the side of the bridge and sat on the edge of the of cliff that led down to the rushing water below. Just below me, Yamame was already getting to work untangling threads.

"I'm so jealous." Parsee said, her smile still present. It was a little unnerving. "That you can tangle me in these webs. So thin and yet surprisingly strong. I'm so-"

"Jealous. Right, yeah." Yamame muttered, but it didn't seem she was paying much attention. "If you hadn't attacked, you wouldn't be stuck here. The webs seemed to have somehow ensnared Parsee to a point where she couldn't move at all. Parsee's eye caught me, instead.

"Shall I tell you a story?" She asked, but I got the sense that it wasn't a question. "Once, there was a young girl. She married a man who took a second wife, and out of love and longing, she devoured the man's second wife." I frowned and asked how devouring the man's second wife had been out of longing. "As her punishment, her hands were turned to snakes, and she became an oni." That didn't sound like a happy story. "True stories are never happy."

"Don't struggle." Yamame told her. "Else we'll never be out of here." She untangled another thread, letting Parsee's leg hang freely.

"Your abilities are truly enviable, Kurodani." Parsee whispered. "The story goes like this." I wondered if this one would make any more sense. "There was a woman. She loved a man so much that she'd die for him, or kill for him, or so anything that he told her to. He told her to wait for him on a bridge in Uji. She waited, and she kept waiting." Parsee fell silent for a moment, and I asked incredulously if that was really the end of the story. "She performed the Uwanari-uchi. She waits still." Parsee replied. "For he will one day return, no matter how much the woman resents him for taking his time. No matter how much she resents that everything she has done has turned to ashes." It seemed like a pretty poor story, though I didn't say that out loud.

"Don't you have any stories with happy endings?" Yamame muttered, freeing enough thread to let Parsee's head fall back. "Like, one where they live happily ever after?"

"There was a spider. A small thing, but hated by all it met." Yamame paused there, watching Parsee silently. "It tried to live peacefully, but was attacked for daring to exist. It pretended that it enjoyed its hated reputation, but deep in its heart, it begged for kindness."

"And then?"

"Each season took its toll. The spider tried to help where it could. Every time it offered, it gave up its entire heart, and as it was rejected, it took the pain of betrayal harder and harder. The spider withered more and more. Eventually, it was so withered and decayed that a passing man who could save it didn't notice and crushed it underfoot."

Yamame snorted. "Of course he did. We don't really wither like that, though." She got back to work, and this time, I saw an indication that Parsee would be free soon. "Was that supposed to be an attack at me? It wasn't a very good one."

"You think about it." Parsee murmured, her eyes sliding shut. "You think that the fate of the spider was sad." She smiled again. "I think it was a relief. To know that the suffering was over. That the hope, the want for companionship was over. Each time the spider suffered, its jealousy and hatred bloomed. To die is to be free."

"I'd like to free you, if you don't mind." Yamame muttered, coiling another strand of web around her finger. Both of Parsee's legs swung freely now. "Unless you want me to cover your mouth, too."

"There was a man." Parsee spoke. "He desired acceptance, and freedom from a life of confusion."

"Let me guess," Yamame said, "He exploded and died."

"He met a woman. He fell in love, and then he died. And the woman lived on without him. Perhaps she found another man. Perhaps she held him in her memory for all of her life." Parsee's smile disappeared. "He did not know. But by not knowing, he never felt the pain of knowing she had stopped loving him. To die is to be free." I frowned, crossing my arms. I really didn't get it.

"Just a little...There!" Yamame said with more excitement, and suddenly, the last few webs snapped, and Parsee fell, only for Yamame to grab her by the wrist and swung her onto the small platform that she had been standing on. "I really think you could do with some new stories." She muttered to Parsee before floating up and alighting next to me. "Come on." Yamame reached down and pulled me up, then began dragging me away before I could even say goodbye. Within seconds, we were deep enough in the caves for it to be like the bridge had never existed. "Even when she's not in a bad mood, she's awful to deal with. Nothing but bad memories and worse stories."

I frowned and asked her if Parsee had meant everything she had said. "No, probably not. She doesn't...mean it, but she can't stop herself from saying it either. It's her lot in life." Sounded like a particularly awful lot to me. "I suppose you could see it that way. She’s happy as long as she has someone to upset,
though." I shivered a little. I felt sorry for her, but I couldn't do anything. Nor was I sure she would even appreciate anything. "Let's just get out of here." Yamame muttered, and I noticed that she was a little pale. Perhaps the stories had gotten to her a little.

Any negative emotions I was feeling soon melted away when I caught sight of Yamame's home. It felt like a week had passed as Yamame unlocked and pulled the door open. "No one's been here. Phew." She sighed in relief. "Hang on, let me just..." She stepped over to the door after I'd pulled it shut and locked it. "I'm going to clean my mouth out until I can't taste the sick." I winced in sympathy. "Please..." She pulled me closer and wrapped her arms around my waist. "Can you warm up the bed?"

That, I decided, was something I could do.

Surprised the fucking bucket didn't show up

>>45441625
Never know, on the way out Kisume might... drop in

the final boss of the touhous to fix... I feel sorry for her

>>45441478
"And that 5 to 5! Well now, i see you've been practicing Yams"
"It's not like that, it's just a bit easier to focus when it's not yoo crowded" Yamame replied blushing
"Still, this is nice" Yuugi added "When Satori comes to play she ends up threatening to jump off my balcony if i don't let her win, she's not very good..." she said scratching the back of her head "S-so I've been meaning to ask...ᴰᵒᵉˢᵃᵒⁿⁿʰᵃᵛᵉᶠʳᶦᵉⁿᵈᵒʳᵃᵇʳᵒᵗʰᵉʳᵖᵉʳʰᵃᵖˢˀ "

>>45441704
The final boss of the touhous to fix is Seija

>>45441704
There might be a conceivable path to fixing Satori if you can handle the smug and the mind reading, but Parsee?
There is no fixing Parsee. Fixing Parsee is equal to killing her. Her very existence is defined by her jealously and envy. She's one of the only characters that I really think ZUN made solely to suffer with no real lights in her life at all. She can't even leave the bridge without outside assistance (Okina makes it so she can leave in GoU)
And all this despite, as Satori points out in the cross reviews, her being kind and valuing and respecting others deep down

>>45441749
Shimmy*

>>45441779
What?

>>45441825
There is nothing to fix with Seija, Shimmy needs fixing for even hanging out with her.

We should worry about fixing Kogasa, she's the reasons anon is where he is

>>45441763
Underground youkai are there for a reason, with Yuugi being the exception in regards to SA.

>>45441763
Do remember that a youkais/gods existence is malleable and can be changed through belief alone. Perhaps it isn't in her best interest... but if it were, she could change.

Now this arc is over, what will be next?
If you notice, almost all arcs start and end at yamame house

>>45444489
Getting Chiyari out of anon's house

>>45444489
this>>45432162

>>45444489
There's still the ordeal with helping Eirin

>>45444489
I think it's about time Anon got a job, especially if he wants to support Yamame as her husband.

>>45441763
Maybe AI would be for Parsee
A companion that is incapable of expressing judgement or disgust towards her, and wont fuck around with anything she says or does

I want to hug parsee and say that I accept her the way she is because deep down she has a good heart

>>45445506
He could sell the youkai/human breeding data he got for Eirin.

>>45444489
We could help Reisen with her PTSD

>>45447451
traitorous cowards deserve everything that's coming to them

>>45447451
What PTSD? She left before the first moon bunny was shot up by the first American made bullet

>>45444489
probably a kagerou chapter since yamame wanted to visit her

>>45444489
America brings FREEDOM to Gensokyo!

aaaaaaa

Writefag lost his life in a gang war in Chicago. Its over.

>>45450078
I can't believe writefag was really cirno....

I'm scared

I poked the wall. It was cold. I tried putting a fist through it, which was even colder and had absolutely no effect on its structural integrity apart from leaving my hand and arm cold and wet. "This could be a problem." Yamame told me, watching from behind with her arms folded. The path to the surface had been snowed in, and I couldn't get out. "It's never usually this bad. Maybe the rainy summer has made for an even snowier winter?" I shrugged, stepping back from the wall and shaking my head. It could be that, I guessed. Yamame took my arm and gave me a reassuring squeeze. "It'll be fine." I hoped so. It wasn't exactly doing any favours for my propensity to panic. "I could just try and blast through?" Yamame asked me, but I shook my head. It seemed like a bit of a dangerous solution, especially if it would turn a bunch of the snow into ice which would then freeze and be even more dangerous. "We could just fl- Oh, right." I looked back at her with a raised eyebrow. "Yeah." She muttered. "Home, then?" I sighed and nodded, then followed after her.

It had been five days since we'd returned from the Hot Spring Town. We'd both slept for roughly half a day, lazed around for the other half, then spent the time after that simply relaxing after all of the time spent with Yamame's sisters. Some of the time was then spent forcing me to model clothes and assist Yamame with bits and pieces of her work, although that was never too taxing, so I wasn't particularly bothered about it. I thought that we both needed a bit of peace and quiet, although the peace and especially the quiet had soon faded once Yamame had announced that she was feeling very pent up, but I did feel very relaxed by the end of it, if a little - or a lot - dehydrated.

"I think that there was probably a very minor avalanche coming from somewhere up the mountain." Yamame was speculating on the causes of the snow blockage from the living room where she was curled up underneath a blanket with a book, while I was busy in the kitchen, stir-frying some of the fresh vegetables we'd gotten just before going to the underground along with some strips of meat. "It's happened before, but usually it's not enough to completely block the tunnel." I shrugged, then called back that I'd never really seen the cave entrance from the village before, and the snow never really seemed to get deep enough to cause any problems over there. I suddenly had a thought about the figures I'd seen from the Hakurei Shrine during that heavy storm in the summer. If they really were working to keep the rain from causing too much damage, then perhaps that was why the snow never seemed to be bad enough to cause real problems. Either way, such protection clearly didn't extend to the cave entrance, which was what had led to the current predicament.

"If it's still there tomorrow, I'll just break through it and save us some time." I flipped the meat over in the wok to double check it was cooked properly, though I very much doubted that Yamame would get sick from eating raw food. Shrugging, I divided the contents of the wok onto two plates along with the rice that I had prepared beforehand. One larger portion for Yamame and a smaller portion for me, though I made it just big enough that Yamame would get the chance to steal from my plate, which I knew she loved doing. Carrying the plates over to Yamame, she accepted hers gratefully and smiled. I sat down next to her, ate the amount I actually wanted, then pretended not to notice when she snuck the rest off of my plate as we talked about the book she was reading. It was some sort of romance novel, but when I asked her what it was about, she blushed and refused to tell me, except to tell me that it was a very moving story. I wondered who had wrote it, but when I glanced over and found that I couldn't read any of the characters, I decided that the possibility that it was someone human had been ruled out. Maybe tengu, since I knew that they had a large printing operation to support all the newspapers that the crow tengu made.

With the food finished and my plate suspiciously emptier than when I'd stopped eating, I took the plates back into the kitchen to wash up, then came back to see that Yamame was raised the blanket and inviting me to join her, which I did gratefully. She'd kept it nice and warm inside, and once she had climbed up onto my lap, I felt comfortable enough to nearly drift off to sleep, and so did Yamame, because she was resting her head against me and had a small smile on her face.

At least, until a loud crash frightened Yamame enough to hurl us both off into a corner of the room. Much like the first time I went to Yamame's home, I lost grip halfway and slammed into the floor on my back, which prompted me to groan in pain and very slowly try to sit up. Once I'd managed to do so, I froze and stared at Yamame in some disbelief. The last time, it had been in the dim light of Yamame's room, where the shadows lengthened enough to hide things in the shadowy corners. Here, the room was well lit, and I could see all four corners. Including the one that Yamame was currently pressed against. With all eight limbs.

I supposed they must have sprouted from her back. Her arms and legs were splayed against the two walls that she was pressed against, but four larger limbs also pressed into the wall. The segmented legs of a spider. Yamame must have realised immediately, because I saw her eyes widen in surprise and a bit of fear. "No, it's - Don't get frightened." She dropped from the wall and as she landed, the legs behind her stretched out. My eyes widened, but I could feel one central thought coming to my mind. She had fear in her eyes. Fear that I could only imagine as being because she thought I might reject her. She took a hesitant step toward me, raising a shaking hand out toward me. "It's - It's okay..." She whispered, and I could even hear the fear in her voice. "I'm still me, I've not - I'm not any different, so-" I staggered to my feet and Yamame jumped back slightly, the legs behind her straightening out for a moment.

My heart was pounding slightly, but I forced myself to keep calm. This was important. For a split second, when I'd seen it, I'm felt that mad desire to turn and run, but with a second longer, my mind began to return to me. I calmed down. I remembered everything that Yamame and I had done together. I remembered her helping me reach Satori Komeiji. I remembered applying cream to her stomach after she'd been hit by Reimu's gohei. I remembered her wrapping me up in her bedsheets until I had to use my head to open her bedroom door. She takes care of me, and I take care of her. That was the point. I lurched forward and grabbed the hand that she'd pulled back slightly when I'd jumped up. I pushed it into a fist and held it with both of my hands, then I pulled her forward slightly so that it was resting against my chest. After a second, I pulled her hand up and kissed it, on her left ring finger, before pressing it against my chest again. I stared into her eyes intensely while I did this, because I wanted to get her to see. I wasn't running. Insistently, I whispered to Yamame that I would not abandon her, and I watched her eyes slowly shift from fear, toward confusion, then toward relief. "I was - I convinced myself that it wouldn't matter, but it was still..." It looked like she was still close to tears, so I shook my head and caressed her face, then kissed her forehead. We were fine.

Once Yamame had calmed down, I asked her to sit on the edge of the seat so I could see properly, and with a moment of indecision, she did so. From there, I could see her legs properly. They were long, and if two of them were to be fully outstretched, they'd probably reach to about the same length as my body. They split into three...No, four segments, with the one running from her back to the first...Joint, I supposed, being the longest, then the second was shorter and the third was short, but ran thinner to the fourth, which was much smaller. The legs had a pattern running down them, stripes of a faded sort of gold followed by black. It made sense, I realised, since those long strips of fabric that ran down from Yamame's skirt also adopted a similar colour scheme. I gently reached out a hand to lightly touch one of the limbs, and Yamame sharply breathed in. "Sorry." She whispered. "It's, um, sensitive." I told her it was fine and pulled my hand away before the whole thing got distracted.

At the end of the legs were the claws. Three, which I asked Yamame about. "It's, um, an orb-weaver thing." Orb-weaver? "Kogane-gumo. that's the kind of spider I am." I nodded slowly, watching as Yamame stretched out one of the legs and showed me the movement of the claws. "Most spiders have two. Orb-weavers have three, because it helps us better manipulate the thread we spin and build more complex webs." I slowly nodded, then asked her how she spun web in this form. "Well...I don't exactly have a spinneret in this form, but we youkai can...Pull..." Yamame trailed off, frowning. "It's...surprisingly hard to explain to a human. We just sort of...Do it? It'd be like asking you how you breathe." She shrugged lamely, her spider limbs mimicking the gesture. "Er, anyway, that is why you don't see any of my sisters working like this." I supposed that I'd probably not get a better answer than that. How did I breathe, anyway? I mean, I understood the idea, but explaining it was like...

"S-So, um...Is that fine?" Yamame asked me tentatively. I supposed that I was still curious as to how much she could do with the addition of the limbs, but it was enough for now. I told Yamame what I was about to do, then gently reached out and placed my hand on the tip of the claws, just to feel what it was like. Surprisingly, it was rather pleasant. I'd...probably played with a spider or two when I was young, but my memory in a lot of that department was still fairly fried, so I wasn't sure. I imagined that with smaller spiders, the claws would feel gentle, or perhaps a little ticklish. "Okay, I'm going to just..." She made a movement that was sort of like a shiver, and the limbs faded out of existence as if they'd never really been there. I waved my hand through the space they'd occupied and felt nothing. I looked back at Yamame, who smiled weakly at me, and I assured her that I was fine.

Potential relationship crisis dealt with, I remembered the reason the whole situation had even come about. There's been a loud crash, and the last time I'd heard that in Yamame's house, it was because Reimu was banging on the door and about to attack Yamame. This time, no one had come to knock on the door, which was good since it probably would have caused some problems. But still, I decided that I should probably go and see what it was, especially in case it had broken through the snow. "I suppose so...Be careful, okay?" Yamame told me, and a few minutes later, I was wrapping my coat around me and stepping outside of Yamame's warm house and into the cold of the tunnels. Winter had made them cold enough that I could see my breathe in the air, but Yamame had, in her wisdom, lined the coat thermally when she had made it, so even with the cold air, I felt warm enough to walk through the tunnels.

Once I started to get close to the cave entrance, I began to hear voices. "S'not my fault the damn surface can't control the weather." One voice, which sounded rusty and a bit dangerous. "If they don't want me to smash through, they shouldn't put snow there."

"Wouldn't you have done that even if it was rock?" That voice, I did recognize. I rounded the corner where I could see the light coming from, and was happy, as well as a little surprised that the wall of snow was gone. There were two figures standing where the snow had been. One was shorter, and was holding something over her shoulder, but the bright white outside the cave was turning the figures into nothing but silhouettes. "I like this entrance, though." That said, I'd recognize that particular hair anywhere. I called out, and both figures turned. "Oh, hey!" Kisami Kurodani called, waving at me. "No Yams with you? I'll have to give you all of her hugs and kisses instead, you know?" I got down the tunnel, and Kisami jumped at me just like always, throwing her arms around me and showering me with kisses while I tried to push her off and complained.

"Do you...Normally do this with humans?" The other girl asked. Once I'd finally gotten Kisami's hair out of the way, since that seemed like an easier task than the girl herself, I could see the other girl. I'd seen her before. Small, with white and bushy hair and two long, curling horns with blue horns tied to them. Over her shoulder was a massive...spoon. No, it had tines at the end, like a fork. A...foon. No, that sounded stupid. A spork. That sounded even stupider, but it would have to do. "You're an energetic person, aren't you?" She asked Kisami, who I'd finally managed to push away.

"Only with people I love embarrassing!" Kisami replied, spinning and pointing a finger at the smaller girl. "Maybe if you were a little bit nicer, I'd do it to you too!" She turned back to me. "Now, I'm going to go and embarrass Yams, then I'm coming back and kidnapping you, so don't you go anywhere!" She poked me in the chest, then took off back down the caves, leaving me with the other girl, who I had just recalled being one of the mob bosses that I'd seen at the aftermath of that party at the Shrine.

"Aren't you humans supposed to be afraid of youkai?" The girl asked me. I slowly said that things had sort of...Gotten out of control. "What if I got out of control right now and ate you up?" She asked me, licking her lips. I scratched my head and said that youkai tended to have a tough time biting me. Plus, my big sister Reimu would probably be pretty upset about it. "Hmm. Well, you don't have to be scared. I'd give you one good hit before eating you anyway." I resolved to never attack her.

"Yuuma Toutetsu, matriarch of the Gouyoku Alliance, at your service." She slammed the spork against the cave floor, then bowed, stretching her arms outward. I introduced myself, then asked Yuuma if she had come from the Hot Spring Town. "I came through there. From the Hell of Blood Pools." The Hell of Blood Pools? That reminded me that Yamame had mentioned some 'strange girl' who was down there, and Yuuma here seemed to fit that description. Then, I asked her why she was here, if she'd been in Former Hell. "Is that the business of someone who isn't part of the Gouyoku Alliance?" She asked me, her rusty voice sharpening slightly. I swallowed and raised my hands, and after staring at me for a moment, during which I caught sight of her sharp teeth, she shrugged.

"I'm looking for someone. A subordinate." I doubted that I knew anyone from the Gouyoku Alliance. From what I was aware of, they were from Hell. "She came up here months ago, and hasn't been back since." Yuuma looked away, out toward the village. "She's the lazy sort. Doesn't move around much. Probably wearing some sort of oversized T-shirt with a stupid slogan on it." I frowned. That sounded...familiar. Like Chiyari Tenkajin, the youkai who was living in my house. "I'm...worried about her." Yuuma murmured. I asked her why, since I would have thought that as a youkai, she could take care of herself. "On the surface? With all these youkai exterminators? I told her that she needed to get out more, but I didn't mean to-" Suddenly, she clamped her mouth shut. "Why am I telling you this?" She growled. "Are you really a human? You've gotten me talking." I nodded, a little confused by the change in demeanour. "Forget it. I'll find her myself." I called out before she could leave, and she turned and pointing the giant spork at me. "What? I'm trying to be nice, but you're pushing me now." I said that I thought she should check the village first, but she might stand out a bit looking like she did. "Oh, that's my business. Have you seen her?" I slowly said that I thought I might have. "I don't need weak people, but you've given me a clue, so I'll leave you for now." Yuuma told me, nodding once. "Perhaps I'll see you again. Perhaps not. Perhaps you'll be strong enough to recruit into the Gouyoku Alliance by then." She didn't leave me a chance to respond before she turned and took off at a sprint into the snow, leaving me thoroughly mystified.

"Well, Yams looked nice and embarrassed once I started asking her what you two have been up to since I last saw you!" Kisami called, coming back down the tunnel toward me. She'd changed up her outfit slightly, the short shirt switched out for a dark, but not quite black, sweater and a long brown coat that was somewhat like the one that Yamame had worn once. "Yams lent me this. Has that girl gone?" She asked, looking around curiously. "I didn't even know who she was, but she seemed strong, so I decided to just talk to her normally." That was probably a good decision, I said, though I privately thought that to some people, Kisami acting normal might be slightly dangerous. "So! You want to marry Yams." Kisami asked me, getting closer. "Which means you need a ring." I nodded, unsure where she was going with this. "Which means," Kisami spun on her heels and half fell, half walked, past me and to the edge of the snow, "You'll need materials." I expected so, but I didn't really know where to get them, so I was hoping that Kisami could help.

"Well...I do know where. One place in Gensokyo where you'll find enough for what you need, but it's...Actually, you'll be fine." That sounded...Not entirely promising, but I supposed that I would make do. "Yeah! Everyone makes friends with you, despite-" She frowned. "No, er, never mind. C'mon, let's get going." Going where? I followed her out into the snow, which began to rise once we'd gotten past whatever Yuuma had blasted. It seemed that the snow really had fallen thickly. "There's one mine I know of, and that's where all the materials I'll ever need are. It's just..." Just what, I asked as I jogged to keep up with Kisami. "You might need something first. Er, I forgot that you humans need to breathe." Wait, did youkai not- "So, um...Let's just get over there first, then we'll figure that out." Again, I tried to ask her where she was talking about.

"Up Youkai Mountain, obviously." Kisami told me, calling over her shoulder. "That's where the mine is." I'd heard Lady Kasen talk about a mine on the mountain. She'd said that Reimu had nearly suffocated inside, which...didn't bode well for me.

Still, I would probably be able to muddle through. I could always just wait outside. Who was going to accost me up there, anyway?

I'm fine
I just got really distracted

>>45450291
I wasn't expecting Momoyo but sure, maybe there will also be Chimata and the Aya interview at last.

>>45450299
Look after yourself writeanon

>>45450278
Those legs must be massaged

>>45450291
Can't wait for the mine arc where we meet the main dork herself, chimata!

WAIT I JUST REALIZED
Isn't Marisa still in Youkai Mountain? Is the big reveal finally coming?

>>45450299
Get well soon, dude.

>>45450857
The Winter War: Kappa edition.
Would the Kappa really keep up their mock war going for so long and especially when the snipers of the Yamawaro make short work of them hiding in the snowy forests.

>>45450291
>who was going to accost me up there, anyway?
"That's it motherfucker, you're coming with me."

>>45451911
Ah yes, the Yammy learns the 'rapey tengu' trope is not only true, but that on this end they're worse than oni. I can't wait for the big teamup of yammy and 'mu to rescue him from the Tenma herself

>>45450521
I think the interview will be like a big flashback at the end of the story

Friendly reminder that Chiyari mostly feeds on resentment and that Anon was panicking for trivial reasons.

>>45453632
This entire story is a flashback and it will end with Anon telling all his 153 kids
>And that is how i met your mother.

>>45456911
"Daddy? How did you know what happens on the parts that you weren't there for?"

>>45456938
"I made it up."

MoF touhous will appear in this arc? i want akis

>>45456983
Feral gods can go and stay go

>>45456983
Anon will get in trouble for not being able to tell who is who.

>>45456983
Anon will wonder if they are also related to the Kurodani tree

>>45456983
their season's over, anon...

>>45456998
here in the third world it's still spring so I thought it was autumn there

>>45457016
You are at third world already? I have been stuck at final boss of the second for a while now.

>>45457039
whaat the fuck

>>45456998
Winter begins on the solstice. It ain't over 'til it's over.

It turned out that quite a lot of things could happen on the way up the mountain, even if I hoped that the mountain itself would be quieter. It began before we'd even cleared the village properly. The streets were quiet, but I could hear plenty of kids, probably somewhere near the canals. They were probably having fun playing with the snow, and I wondered if the canal had even frozen over. Things seemed to be going fine, and I made small talk with Kisami about what she’d been up to since the party in the Hot Springs Town. From the long, rambling story I received, I came to the conclusion that the answer was probably ‘not much’. It sounded like a lot of the other spiders had taken even longer to clear their hangovers, and then they’d been too ill to work, and nothing much had been done in the end. Finally, we got out of the village and onto the trail that led out past the farmland and off into the wilder parts of the valley.

Then, I nearly walked into a fairy. Kisami pulled me out of the way before I trampled on her. She'd been sitting and playing with the snow and wearing white, so I'd missed her entirely. The snow itself was making progress difficult, and Kisami complained to me multiple times that I should really get my inability to fly under control. I shrugged and said that I was working on it, then remarked that it was probably good that I was getting some more exercise battling through the difficult terrain, since I'd been slacking somewhat on that front since I'd stopped living with Lady Kasen.

"You wouldn't know it." Kisami commented, poking me in the side. "You look...Good? Or, well, not out of shape. I know that you humans get all big and round and tired all the time if you don't do enough moving about, but you seem to move around a lot." I shrugged, saying that I tried my best, even if I didn't get quite as much exercise as I did when I was living with Lady Kasen. As we finally made it to the path that connected the village to the Shrine, the lake and the mountain, Kisami shoved her hands in her pocket and nudged me with her shoulder. "That Kasen of yours - She lives somewhere on the mountain, doesn't she?" I nodded. I didn't say anything about where, just because it wasn't my information to reveal, even if the need for the specific route to enter her senkai changed so often. "I think I've seen her once or twice."

Curious, I asked Kisami what exactly it was that she did with her spare time. Obviously, I knew that Yamame was a seamstress and worked on the construction jobs with her sisters when she could, since I'd encountered her doing both of those things, but Kisami seemed to be the eldest of the sisters who were around for the Hot Springs Town's project. What did she do outside of that? "...Huh." She remarked. I frowned. "No, it's nothing, just...I'm surprised that you asked. I thought you'd be too obsessed with Yams to think about something like that." I stammered some sort of response about not being that obsessed, which made Kisami giggle and steal my left arm to wrap her own arms around. "Oh, I think it's sweet, you silly human. Don't get all tongue-tied now; That's Yams' job." I laughed a little, then resolved to never tell Yamame that I had.

"Well...I'm the oldest who's still actively involved with the whole construction business, even if it's just as management. My sisters - The ones my age - mostly do their own things. We see each other sometimes, but they're even more private than Yamame is. And our mother, well...Best not go there. She's...intense." Kisami shook her head. I decided that I probably shouldn't ask about that, no matter how much I wanted to. "Anyway, I live in the underground too, down in a different network of caves. We all do, and we all know it like the back of our hands." I still felt a little turned around in the tunnels, so I imagined that this had to be a familiarity thing. I knew the village about that well, after all. "But, I come up here more often than most." For the jewellery stuff? "Exactly! See, you're getting it. There's this mine that I'm taking you to. That's where I get a lot of my materials. Plenty of gold and silver there. I'm just worried that...No, it should be fine." I thought that sounded a little ominous, but I trusted Kisami enough to think that she wouldn't put me in danger. At least, not too much danger. "Not that it's going to be a problem, but...Just out of interest, how long can you hold your breath for?" I just stared at her wordlessly, and she gave me a very slightly nervous smile.

About halfway up the mountain, our first sign of trouble came. "Um, don't overreact or anything, but we're being watched." I tried, but still couldn't resist the temptation to look around slightly. "Don't look!" Kisami hissed. "It's probably nothing. White wolf tengu are always watching the mountain." I nodded, but still tried to spot whoever it was. "Oh, that's not going to work." Kisami whispered. "Have you never seen a white wolf tengu before?"

I had to conceded that I hadn't. The only tengu I had seen was Shameimaru, who I had a feeling was probably quite strange as far as tengu went. "White hair, white vests, white sleeves...They've got dark skirts, but you'll never see their bottom half from the trees. Plus, with all this snow around? They might as well be invisible."

I asked her if I had anything else to worry about. “Well, there’s probably also a bunch of journalist tengu watching us too. They’ll be looking for a story. Don’t do anything…weird, and they shouldn’t have anything to print.” I asked Kisami how she knew all of this, which got her to look off to the side and hide her face from my line of sight. “It’s, er, a little embarrassing, but on one of the first time I came up here, I got into a fight with the white wolf tengu. I wasn’t as good as I am now, so they beat me up. Fortunately, their lips also got very loose after they thought I was unconscious, so I heard them talking about the crow tengu watching the fight.” Had that ended up in a newspaper, too? “Oh, definitely! I think I have a copy somewhere, actually.” I wondered if Miss Meiling had ever seen it, considering how much Kisami looked like her. “I think this was before that mansion of theirs actually appeared, but…I guess she could have already been around. Maybe she saw it. Maybe that’s why she thought that I was her sister…” Kisami trailed off, deep in thought. “Anyway, they’ll only kidnap you if they think you’re trying to get into tengu territory.”

I grumbled that I couldn't help but feel a little more uneasy now that Kisami had pointed that out. "I thought you said that you used to live with that Lady Kasen?" I had, but... "Well, you've probably been watched for that entire time, so relax. They'll only start causing problems if you go into their territory anyway." Feeling a little better, I asked where we were heading. "Oh, just through their territory." I began to wonder if I should have made a will or something before coming out with Kisami. "What?" She asked, looking like she had no idea what she'd just said.

Luckily, Kisami's words held true, and we weren't actually accosted by anyone for a while longer. We passed the point where I usually turned off of the path to reach Lady Kasen's senkai, but Kisami led me up higher, and I was surprised to find that I was starting to get out of breath. The snow made everything difficult, and walking without slipping and rolling all the way back down to the bottom of the mountain took most of my focus. As a result, I was taken completely by surprise and fell face-first into the snow when I heard another loud crash, like the one I'd heard from inside Yamame's house. I'd assumed that it was from Yuuma breaking through the snow that had been blocking the cave entrance, but as I rolled onto my back and thanked myself for zipping my coat up so the snow couldn't get through, I realised that the crash had been something else entirely.

Of course, from as high up on the mountain as we were, I could see practically the entire valley. I could see the Hakurei Shrine in the distance, and even from as far away as we were, I was certain that I could see someone standing at the torii gate, looking out. I could only imagine that it was Reimu, who was just as curious as I was about the sound. I looked down, then swept my eyes across to try and find the source. I turned out that I didn't have to try very hard, either.

Down and somewhat off to the side was the Genbu Ravine, though it was still close enough that I could say that I was getting a close view of the action. I knew that this was where the kappa lived, and I knew that the rivers that twisted from that ravine and the waterfall that fell from the mountain out through the valley were their waters, and the forests close by and rising a small distance up the mountain were the location of the yamawaro faction. That was where the whole war they had apparently been fighting had been occurring, and that was where Marisa had been held as a prisoner and where Tenshi had joined the opposing faction to her, seemingly just for fun. And even from here, I could see that a whole crater had formed in the woods, with the trees surrounding it having been pushed slightly backward, and all the snow had been blown off, leaving a gradually whitening circle until it reached the point where the impact hadn't disturbed the trees. There was smoke rising from the crater, big twisting trails that dissipated into the white clouds above. I couldn't imagine there was anyone in the valley who hadn't heard that. Hearn could probably have heard that from Australia.

"Wow." Kisami commented. "I wonder what's going on there." I asked her if she knew about the kappa and yamawaro war, and she frowned and scratched her head. "Er...Maybe? I think Yams mentioned it, but I don't - Oh, hold on." She ran her fingers through her hair and swept it all back, tilting her head upwards so it all fell straight. "Yeah, I think one of my sisters - The ones my age, I mean - might be supplying them." I stared at her blankly. "I think she said to keep that a secret. Whoops." One of Kisami's sisters was...suppling weapons for their war? "Oh, no, I don't think so. She's no good at that sort of thing, and I don't think any kappa or yamawaro worth their lack-of-salt would want weapons designed by someone else instead of themselves. I think it's just some of the materials." I stared for a few seconds longer, then shook my head and laughed a little. So, it seemed that there was nothing under the sun that wasn't being done by one of the Kurodani family members. "Er, like I said, those girls are a bit more private. I might not even be right about her supplying them. She's a bit of an eccentric." For Kisami to describe her sister as an eccentric could only mean that she was close to being completely mad, I imagined.

We were still watching the crater. The smoke, still curling and twisting into the cold air, was beginning to dissipate, and I could see that something was at the centre of the crater. I couldn't make it out properly, even though I suspected that the peach had enhanced my vision a fair bit, but it seemed to be a person, or at least a person-shaped thing. "Hey, she kind of looks like my sister." She? "Yeah, er...Her." Kisami pointed at the crater again. "Her hair's not quite that long, though. And her hair's red. And it's...Okay, maybe she doesn't look that much like her." I wasn't really sure what to make of that, so I shook my head and squinted back at the crater, where there seemed to be movement.

There was a person in the crater, and I could just about make out their blue hair. Given the context, I could only imagine that this was Tenshi, who had apparently joined the kappa. "What's that on her arm?" Kisami asked out loud. I couldn't tell from this distance, but it did look like there was something there. On her leg, too, and something over the white of her shirt. But for a war...Armour? I couldn't see Tenshi, an ex-celestial, needing armour to survive the attacks of people on the surface. Shrugging to Kisami, I said that perhaps she'd just gotten in the mood and decided to dress up according to the situation. It seemed like the sort of thing she'd do, since all of her complaints about how much worse the surface was compared to Heaven had always seemed to be bluster to me. Hurriedly, I explained how Marisa and Tenshi had ended up on opposite sides of this whole war thing, even if I was pretty sure it was all a game to them, and they'd likely just leave in the end. "You sure do know some strange people." Kisami commented. It did seem to happen to me a lot as time went on. "Hey...What's that?" Kisami pointed upward at the sky above the crater.

It seemed to be glowing. Not in the way that clouds did when the sun was behind them, but like there was a raging fire directly above the cloud itself. I looked down at Tenshi, still stood in the middle of the crater, and saw that she was looking upward. Then, she planted her feet in the centre of the crater and raised her arms upward. I heard a sound like something powering up, so loud that it echoed all the way to where Kisami and I were standing, and probably as far as to Reimu at the Shrine.

And the skies opened. Right above the crater, Something golden and black shot through at incredible speed, causing the clouds surrounding it to be blown back, leaving a spot of blue sky surrounded by thick and heavy clouds of white. The gold and black thing was spiralling downward, trails of energy surrounding it, and it was heading straight for Tenshi. Suddenly, I had a feeling that I knew where that first crash, I'd heard from Yamame's home had come from, and I slapped my hands over my ears just before the spiralling object collided with Tenshi.

That turned out to be a good thing, because the moment the two connected, there was a massive shockwave that ballooned outward, and since Kisami and I weren't all that far away, it was strong enough to knock us both backward into the snow, though happily it had knocked us uphill and hadn't sent us rolling downward. Kisami had demonstrated a very Yamame-like instinct and grasped my arm before trying to scrabble backwards in fright. Actually, I supposed it was more like Yamame had displayed a Kisami-like instinct, since she was older. Fortunately, I could still see what was happening, which meant that I was able to reach up and lightly slap Kisami's arm enough time to get her to come to her senses and release me.

In the centre of the crater, which had widened in size slightly - and the ring of snowless trees had expanded further - I could see Tenshi, her feet still planted in the ground, but her arms now blocking the attack that had come from above. I'd recognize the attacker anywhere. Marisa had even more of the strange armour additions that Tenshi had, and they seemed to even run through the broom which Marisa gripped in her left hand. She had twisted in mid-air with her fist lashing out and her elbow striking downward, but Tenshi had blocked both which had caused the massive shockwave. Now, the two were locked in place. I imagined that there was some intense strain going on inside, the kind I'd seen between the oni, but perhaps more magically assisted. "What's that on her broom?" Kisami asked, having managed to release her grip on me and get back to her feet. "Just before the bristles. It looks...Uh, sort of octagonal?" That was probably Marisa's Mini-Hakkero, I said. Her magical furnace. Suddenly, the power behind that attack made more sense. I'd seen - More than seen - her Master Spark in action, and I'd seen the way she braced herself before using it for the recoil, so she must have been using it to increase the strength of her attack. In the back of my mind, I wondered if they were beginning to enjoy the whole thing a little too much.

Suddenly, the two broke apart, before rushing at each other with physical attacks. These each left sounds like thunder echoing through the air, and after a few seconds more, Tenshi shot off into the sky again, and I saw Marisa follow a moment later, her broom shooting upward so quickly that it looked like Marisa was only barely clinging onto it with one hand. She too disappeared behind the clouds once more, and if it wasn't for the destruction they'd left in their wake, I wouldn't have even known that it had happened.

At least, until I saw the blue and the green of the kappa and yamawaro respectively break out of the trees and start fights of their own. "I guess their war thing is going well." Kisami commented, patting the snow out of her hair. After a moment, I realised that she'd never get it all, so I spun her around and brushed off as much of it as I could see. "Well, that was...Interesting. What's their deal?" I thought for a moment, and was forced to say that it was a very long story. "Ha." Kisami said. "Of course it is. The best ones usually are." She sighed and shivered, pulling her coat around her tighter. "C'mon, let's keep going. We've got to get across this whole section. Over there, you see?" She pointed toward a massive cliff face, easily dwarfing the tallest buildings I'd seen in my time in the Outside World. "That's the Secret Heaven Cliff, and above that is the False Heaven Shelf, which then leads to the Rainbow Dragon Cave." Those were three names that I didn't recognize, but my most important question was how exactly we were supposed to climb the cliff face. "Er...I'll just carry you, probably." Of course, I muttered. I couldn't wait.

What was the Rainbow Dragon Cave, anyway? "It's a mine. No idea when it was made or who made it, but it's been around forever. Recently, someone's set up in there and started working, but they don't care about most of the stuff you can actually mind from there, she just wants these weird rainbow rocks. So, I said, "Can I have all this gold?" and she replied that as long as I didn't touch her 'dragons', that was fine. I mean, she did try to attack me first, but I'm no slouch, so I managed to hold out long enough to calm her down. I don't really know what that thing about dragons meant, but I wasn't complaining, but then, when I left..." Kisami seemed to have been wanting to talk about this for ages, because once she'd started, she couldn't seem to stop.

Even though I still had the prickling on the back of my neck from being watched, I felt a little bit more relaxed. Especially since I doubted that the whole thing would take much longer. It seemed simple enough to get to this cave, then find whatever it was we were here for and get out. What could go wrong? Well, apart from the breathing thing. I was still waiting for a solution to that to present itself. I looked over my shoulder for a moment and I could have sworn that I saw someone balanced on the tip of a tree, but in the blink of an eye, they disappeared.
But I'm sure it was nothing.

>>45457365
>Tenshi had joined the opposing faction to her
I thought we were just fucking around did that actually happen?

Is Kisami going to suffer spider hibernation too?

>>45400914
I wish to drink with the yugi

>They'll only start causing problems if you go into their territory anyway." Feeling a little better, I asked where we were heading. "Oh, just through their territory."
>"Hey, she kind of looks like my sister." She? "Yeah, er...Her." Kisami pointed at the crater again. "Her hair's not quite that long, though. And her hair's red. And it's...Okay, maybe she doesn't look that much like her."
Why is Ki so great?

>>45457431
Yes it happend after they finished fixing the shrine. Last thread me thinks.

>>45457373
>And the skies opened. Right above the crater, Something golden and black shot through at incredible speed, causing the clouds surrounding it to be blown back, leaving a spot of blue sky surrounded by thick and heavy clouds of white. The gold and black thing was spiralling downward, trails of energy surrounding it
The battle is so intense that it seems like he is describing the apocalypse

>>45457566
I mean it is an angel fighting a witch which is basically an envoy of Satan

>>45457469
Sounds like half the other spiders already are, since no one seems to want to get any work done and Yams didn't come with anon (Not that Ki would have let him since its for, you know, her engagement ring

I wonder if the Kappa are actually killing each other in thsoe war games.

>>45457818
It wouldn't be a war game if they killed each other bakanon

>>45457875
These are monster who eat your soul through your anus. You never know you know?

>>45457818
Isn't it all just pretend for them, I'm sure some of them get hurt but it's more just an excuse to test out their weapons and gadgets.

UOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH its the advertise

>>45457892
They're kappa, arguably the most friend of the monster

How big are Yamame's Yamames? Is she on the larger side or the smaller side?

>>45464824
All spiders are bottom heavy, except for Kisame.

Lets hope Yamane does not get the wrong idea with Anon and Kisami walking around together like that. Its like the third time they go alone now.

>>45464824
This has already been discussed in her thread
small

>>45464856
slowly this >>45427716 is closer to reality

>>45464856
I think she'll just think it's cute that he's becoming so familiar with her family, as if he was already a part of it. And then reprimand him for not spending enough time with her.

>>45457361
>And our mother, well...Best not go there. She's...intense." Kisami shook her head. I decided that I probably shouldn't ask about that
hmmmmmm.......

>>45457361
Ah, my monthly reminder that Hakika drew touhou.

>>45466409
She is a old school tsuchiguno who tricked and raped Yamane's dad before feeding on him.

>>45466409
she's a serial man-stealer
that's why she's not around, everyone's terrified that if they try and bring a man home near her, she'll end up fucking him first

>>45466464
maybe true, since she doesn't even mention her father

"Is there someone here?!" There was a very short girl in a green uniform standing in the white snow and holding some sort of weapon. She was looking around the clearing and was clearly very suspicious. "I'm not going to hurt you, just...Come out and talk..." She seemed fairly trustworthy to me, and I thought she might be able to help Kisami and I figure out where we were going, so I opened my mouth.

Kisami, clearly smarter than I was, slapped a free hand over my mouth. We wobbled precariously in the air until she managed to get her other arm around my stomach to keep me from falling away. Below, the yamawaro looked around suspiciously for a moment longer, then shook her head and began to trudge away through the snow. I tried to get Kisami to let go of my mouth, by she kept her hand in place. "Don't make a sound." She breathed into my ear. I frowned, then looked back down at the empty clearing. Except...It wasn't empty. At least three flickering shapes were rising from the snow in a terrifying image, and then their shapes coalesced into the blue of a kappa uniform. "Four minutes in the cold." One of them muttered. "That's over double what we were getting before." One of the others was shaking the snow off of her cap, and another was detaching some sort of block from her shoulder. "Guess that celestial girl wasn't lying about being able to help Nitori upgrade our camo."

"How'd she manage it?" The girl who'd been shaking off her cap asked. "Those systems are all of our own design, so she shouldn't have known any of them." I felt like I was about to sneeze. Fortunately, it passed.

"Said she was really lucky!" The third kappa said, snorting. "Sounded like she was talking out of her-"

"Alright, that's enough. Let's get going before another group finds us. I've almost got enough points from this whole thing for a new engine..." The three began to trudge off. "Only reason we got so far into forest monkey territory is because the celestial's distracting that Kirisame girl, anyway. What's their deal, anyway? I heard something about some guy's lover...?" I heard them saying as they disappeared into the distance behind us.

Once the entire clearing seemed silent, I resumed trying to get Kisami to release me. After a few moments of deliberation, she released her hand, allowing me to breathe in gratefully. "Well...I was going to let us keep walking there, but if all this stuff is happening..." Kisami thought for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. "Yeah, I guess you're just going to have to manage. Don't worry, I won't drop you. Unless I get distracted." I tried to ask her what she meant, but she just rose up higher into the air and took off in the direction of the massive cliff face that led up to what she'd called the False Heaven Shelf, ignoring my cries.

I was getting a little bit tired of this sort of thing, but at the same time, the views from the sky across the snow-covered valley were rather amazing. The whole valley was white, with momentary breaks in the snow where I could see the torii gate of the Hakurei Shrine, or the buildings of the village, despite the snow covering the rooftops. Nearer, I could see chunks of snow falling from the cliff face into the trees, and giant icicles forming on some of the overhanging edges.

"I think we'll get through unnoticed here..." Kisami said. "They're probably all focused on either those two having the big fight, or their own little fights. I guess a war is good for distractions." I still didn't really understand this whole war thing. Was it a real war? Were they actually trying to kill each other? "Hey, don't ask me. I'm just a humble spider." A humble spider who just so happened to have a sister who might have been supplying both sides. "Wait, that's not - I mean...It's only a little bit of playing both sides! There's no harm in that, right?" I didn't really have an answer to that because I hadn't been involved in playing both sides of an armed conflict before. "You are making this sound so much worse than it is! Honestly, I don't know what Yams sees in you!" I was silent for a moment that I hoped felt like judging, and Kisami huffed. "It's my job to do the teasing around here, thank you very much!" She sounded like she was pouting. "You'd better not start doing that to Yams too. Her head might explode if everyone's teasing her." I didn't particularly want that to happen, I dryly replied. "Well, I hope not." Kisami was still pouting a little, it seemed.

Finally, we cleared the top of the cliff face and I saw the False Heaven Shelf for myself. It was a very curious looking plateau. The snow seemed to have only been able to establish a partial foothold up here, with long trails of snow and ice between grassy fields that seemed untouched by Winter. It was far from the way the world below was completely blanketed with snow. There were some expansive rocky patches which looked more like they belonged at the bottom of a river, as if one had flowed through this area some time in the past. I imagined that, come Spring, there would be a huge number of flowers in all variety of colours covering this area. I hoped that I'd get a chance to see it at that time.

"Should be just over..." Kisami was mumbling to herself. "There?" She stopped, hovering in the air at a height where I would probably not have a good time if she dropped me. "No, there?" She spun in different directions, making my legs swing with her movement. I didn't feel particularly more comforted by this. "Somewhere...Hey, do you see a building over there?" She swung me to the right, and I squinted for a few moments before shaking my head. "What about here?" She spun me the other way. I shouted a second no, then asked Kisami just what she was doing. "I know it's around here somewhere! I've been stuck underground for so long that I haven't had a chance to come up here for a while!" She spun some more, each time making me feel more certain that I was in for an untimely death. "Okay, let's just try...This way." She muttered, before turning and shooting off on a path to the left of where we'd come up on the cliff.

Finally, I spotted a building sitting in the grass patch of land, with snow surrounding it and the rocky cliff face of the mountain next to it, which made me sigh in relief that my being carried around might come to an end soon. And sure enough, Kisami did began to lower us as the house got closer, before she finally dropped me on the edge of the snow surrounding the building. She landed next to me and wrapped her coat tighter around herself before rubbing her arms. "Urgh...It's so cold!" She cried, looking miserable. Her nose was also looking a little red, and she sniffled a tiny bit. "I'm not built for this. Can't believe I ever complained about the Hot Springs Town; This is so much worse, no contest!"

I had half been wondering about that, actually. I knew that a lot of creatures hibernated over winter, and I was curious if spiders like the Kurodani family did too. Kisami looked at me miserably as she shivered. "We feel the urge, yeah. It's probably why you see Yams wanting to stay home so much at this time of year." I had been surprised that she hadn't decided to come with us, actually. "The underground's good for that, because the temperature is fairly constant. You'd never see us on the surface unless we absolutely had to do during Winter normally." Curious, I asked Kisami why she'd come with me if it was such unbearable weather. "Why do you think?" She asked with a slight frown. I shrugged. "You're planning to marry my cute little sister. That'll officially make you family, and I can't turn down a request for help from family." She said it so seriously that it made me blush, and I mumbled something about how I wasn't family yet. "Oh, you might as well be! You've already got most of the closest family to like you." She must have noticed that her answer had locked my brain up somewhat. It was another one of those things that had made me wonder how I'd lucked out as much as I had. To be accepted into this large family...

"A-Anyway, let's get moving before I really do freeze to death." Kisami clapped suddenly, snapping me back to reality. "So, we're not actually going here, but I know that the entrance to the mine is near one of these abandoned-looking buildings. And, if we're lucky..." Kisami started toward the building's front door, and I hurried after her. "Damn." She called. "Never mind." She gestured at the wall, which was blank. I looked at her in confusion. "No dragon pipe. That's her symbol." Who’s symbol, I asked with mounting confusion. "Madame Komakusa's." Kisami replied mysteriously. "C'mon. It's not here, and the mine's not here either." She sighed, then wrapped an arm around my waist and took to the air again.

This carried on for a while. We checked two more buildings with no results, then finally, on the next approach, Kisami cried out. "Ha! There we go! Mine spotted!" She pointed her free hand at a sort of entrance cut into the side of the mountain. "And there's another building there...Hang on." She swooped in closer, then called out a second time. "It's our lucky day!" She pointed at the golden representation of a dragon hanging next to the door. "This is the one!" She dropped me at the door, then stepped inside. Slowly, I followed behind her, wondering just what I was in for.

Inside was a hazy, smoke-filled den. All of the shutters were closed, and the only light came from candles that lit the room with dim, flickering light. There were plenty of quiet murmurs, and I could see a lot of figures scattered around the place. In one corner, I could see three crow tengu, gathered around a game of hanafuda. Over there, four white wolf tengu playing cee-lo. There was even a group of yamawaro in the corner, gathered around a board for some game I didn't recognize. But, to my concern, I saw a snake. A large snake, holding a game piece in its mouth for whatever game it was playing. Clearly, it was a youkai too.

Kisami moved into the place without any hesitation, so I decided that I should probably do as she did and not draw attention to the fact that I was a human. It was possible that I could trick them into thinking that I was a youkai. She was heading for someone who was sat near the back of the place, their face in shadow. I could see the pipe in their hand, the embers glowing slightly as they brought it to their mouth for a pull. "Oh-ho?" She murmured, raising her head. I could still only see the silhouette vaguely in the shadow. "Looks like we have a newcomer." She raised the pipe to her lips and in the glow of the embers, I could just about make out her ruby-coloured eyes, as well as the hair that hung over the right eye. "Welcome, esteemed guest, to this gathering place of ladies and gentlemen. The Komakusa gambling den." She stood as she talked, then finished with a deep bow. It brought her into the candlelight, by which I could see that her hair was a deep purple tied into a large ponytail with a yellow tie, and she wore robes that had elaborate patterns on them along with a multi-layered skirt in deep purple. She seemed like a high-class sort of person, like a high-ranking courtesan. Clumsily, I introduced myself, trying to make it seem cool and effortless, the way I imagined a youkai would be. This, I assumed, was Madame Komakusa.

She watched me for a moment, then turned to Kisami. "And - Miss Kurodani. It's been quite some time, hasn't it?" Kisami laughed awkwardly and scratched her head. Madame Komakusa watched her curiously, then took another drag of her pipe, blowing the smoke out over us.

"Er, yeah...Been busy, you know?" Kisami actually looked a little uncomfortable, which was an expression I hadn't seen on her face much. "Listen, I'd love to stick around, but I'm actually just as busy now. Do you know if that goddess is around?"

"I presume you are speaking of Lady Tamatsukuri?" Madame Komakusa replied, taking another drag of her pipe. "I believe that she is in the mines right now, if I remember rightly. But, Miss Kurodani, you know that you cannot take him in with you." She leaned in toward me, locking the one eye I could see on mine. "I know not why you've decided to come all the way here, but even in disguise, a human should not be at this particular gambling den." She whispered very quietly, so that none of the other patrons could hear. "Go to Geidontei, since I set up there too." I slowly nodded, but said that I wasn't looking for gambling. "My, oh my...What is it you two are up to, hmm?"

"Er, can I tell you later?" Kisami asked, but she clearly wasn't looking to answer. Maybe she thought it would take too long. I felt fairly calm, even though I was in a youkai den. "We should get going. Did, er, Lady Tamatsukuri leave anything here? Ability cards, maybe?"

"...No, I'm afraid not. But, she did mention once, a long while ago, that she was carrying a spare on her which should fit your purposes." Madame Komakusa smiled mysteriously. "If you're willing to risk entering those mines. I hear there's someone far too dangerous and despised in there to be allowed on the surface."

Kisami laughed again. "We'll be extra careful, honest!" She opened her mouth to say something more, but was overpowered by a shout coming from the group of white wolf tengu, followed by two of them getting to their feet in what looked to be the start of a brawl.

"Ah, I knew it was only a matter of time." Madame Komakusa sighed. "I shall have to take my leave, I'm afraid. Someone needs to keep this madhouse under control, after all." She bowed deeply to both of us again, then sauntered past, pipe in hand. I watched her go, wondering what her plan was, but Kisami grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me back outside before I could see much at all.

"Best not hang around there too long, I think." She told me once we were outside and breathing the fresh air again. "I think that snake had his eye on you." Curious, I asked what the point of all of that had been. "Well, I was hoping that Lady Tamatsukuri would be there. Do you remember that ability card craze from a year or two ago?" I thought about it.

Yeah, I said. I thought I did. I'd never actually got one or anything, but I'd heard about it happening from two old guys in Geidontei. "Well, I heard a rumour that Lady Tamatsukuri can make special cards, like one that lets you breathe down in the caves." That was a very...specific kind of card. "I heard about it from that person deep in the caves who attacked me. She said that she got attacked by a human with that card." I stared for a moment, because I already had a suspicion of which human it had been. "I can see the cogs turning...Yeah. The Hakurei Shrine Maiden." That had been a recent incident, then. I thought that Lady Kasen had mentioned it offhandedly, but I hadn't heard much more. However, I thought that it might at least provide something for me to bring up to this Lady Tamatsukuri if we did happen to run into her.

"Okay, the mine's just up there, so...Let's get in there. We shouldn't be too long, I don't think. If we can't get hold of a way for you to breathe down there, you might just have to wait up top." I shrugged and said that I would probably be fine. "Alright, if you say so." Kisami nodded, then led me across the last bit of the plateau to the cave. It was a little foreboding, but I at least knew that I had Kisami with me. It wasn't the first dangerous cave that a Kurodani had helped me through. Swallowing, I stepped inside, then kept walking before I could convince myself to turn around. "Seems quiet, this time. I guess it was a while ago that I last came here, but back then it was packed with fairies." I wondered if it was the cold Winter keeping them all away. "Yeah...I guess that could be the case." Kisami frowned, scratching her chin. "I think there's a split here..." She raised a hand and conjured up a bolt of bright danmaku, much like Yamame and Reimu had sometimes done for me. Sure enough, there was a point where the mine split off. "Leads down, I think. Should we just-"

But then, I started to hear a noise. Something, not far in the distance from the main shaft, making a sound like a chisel hitting rock. "Too high up to be that other girl. This might be Lady Tamatsukuri..." Kisami whispered. "We should probably catch her before she gets away." I decided that I'd much rather not descend into the depth of the mine where I couldn't breathe if I had a choice, so I nodded and let Kisami lead the way. After a few minutes of following the shaft around, the noise began to become clearer, and I saw a slight light up ahead. "Hello~" Kisami called, and I heard the chisel sound stop. "Is that you, Lady Tamatsukuri?" Then, we rounded a bend in the mine, and I saw the source of the noise.

She had sharp eyes and an even sharper face, with a severe sort of expression. Straw-coloured hair, at the front, from which hung two hair ornaments the likes of which I'd never seen before, but toward the back, her hair was a deep, rich brown. That was almost unnoticeable to the thing she had on her head, which was like the things on her hair, but far bigger and just as hard to describe. Her outfit was a tunic over a white shirt and a skirt, both of which had strange curling patterns on them. The two were separated by a purple sash wrapped around her waist and hanging down. Slung over her shoulder and running down to her hip was a string adorned with a large number of small magatama, and a fair larger number were hanging from her skirt and the purple sash. She held a tool in her hand with which she was excavating the cave wall, though she'd turned to look at us both curiously. I noticed that she was barefoot, which seemed like a concern in these caves, but a second later, I realised that she was probably doing what Lady Hecatia did and floating just barely above the ground.

"Kisami Kurodani." She said, her voice smooth and slightly imposing. "It's been some time. And..." She looked at me with a frown. "A human? Why have you brought an ignorant human into the Rainbow Dragon Cave?" She directed her question to Kisami, then turned to me. "Go back if you wish not to become a corpse. If you proceed much further, you'll cease to be able to breathe, and then you'll become nothing but an ignorant human corpse."

"Oh, relax." Kisami said cheerfully. "Besides, the way I hear it, you've got a way around that sort of thing." She turned to me. "This is Lady Misumaru Tamatsukuri. She's a crafter too, but she works with different stuff to me." I bowed and politely introduced myself, hoping that Kisami’s laid-back attitude wouldn’t make this harder.

"Izanagi Objects." Lady Tamatsukuri filled in. She slipped the chisel into the sash and clasped her hands behind her back. "Ore from the Age of the Gods. But that doesn't answer my question. Just what is your purpose here?" So, I got to explaining in as rushed a tone as I could.

Before she decided to eject me herself.

felt very ill today
it's amazing how much time having to blow your nose twice a minutes takes away from writing

>>45466975
Aww man i hate it when that happens at one point i just get fed up with it and lie on my back with my face pointing upwards.

>>45466975
That sucks man, hope you get better.

I can see it, Kisami will leave Anon alone since he can not get in the mine and in the minute he is alone he will be kidnapped by the tengu.

The snake is secretly Kanako
Don't judge her she needs hobbies too

>>45466948
>"I'm not going to hurt you, just...Come out and talk..."
Would you trust her? Would you go out and talk to her?

>>45467225
They would probably get mad at you for interrupting their game and wasting their time and kick you out of the mountain. And if one of them lacks trigger discipline you might get shot acccidently.
Or if you are Anon, you will be dragged to their barrecks and used as a morality boost.

>>45467126
*haaaa* "Finally! You made me work for this mister, so i hope you're confortable there because you aren't leaving until i get the full story! And don't even think of attempting an escape, even if i wanted to i cannot stop the other tengus from doing what they want to you!"
She pauses to drink a full cup of green tea n one go
*Pwaah* "Okay look sorry for the outburst, but you must admit you're kind of frustrating"
She said as she readied pen a paper
"Now... let's start with-"
*CRASH*
"ENOUGH OF YOUR BULLSHIT TENKO! WHO IS IT?! TELL ME! TELL ME RIGHT NOW!"
Marisa had power bombed Tenshi through Aya's rooftop landing squarely on top of the tengu knocking her out instantly.
The sounds of gunshots and heavy machinery could be heard through the hole on the roof
"IS IT YUUGI?! SHE KEEPS GOING TO THE CAVES SO IT'S SOMEONE FROM THERE! SATORI?! KOISHI?! THE BUCKET?! KASEN'S BEEN THERE A LOT TOO! IS IT HER?! ah..."
"YOU!" she finally noticed me
"Finally! I can hear it from you!"
hahahahahaha
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!
Tenshi was sadly still too dizzy from the fall to stop Marisa
Much to Marisa's dismay however i felt a familiar falling sensation while my vision began to be quickly covered by floating eyes
before i lost sight of Marisa entirely i could hear
"WAIT IT WAS THE HAG?!"
And then i landed on a...chair? It was quite a strange one, it had the frame of chair but it was a lot more...horizontal and had what felt like strings across it rather than common materials like wood or cushions.
"I sincerely can't understand why you would willingly walk into youkai mountain in the middle of a kappa war when one of the top crow tengu is hunting you down" a bemused Ran stood in front of me, i tried to explain why but she cut me off shortly
"Listen i'm not in the mood to hear this, i only saved you for miss Kurodani's sake, i will now send you to the Hakurei shr-"
"RAAAAAAN Chen wants the pool noodles!"
From a corner walked a soaked Hearn wearing what i could only describe as something that made her feel younger
She froze when she noticed me
"...Don't tell Reimu" both Ran and Hearn exclaimed at the same time before i was sent to Reimu's
Quite literally in fact since as soon as i landed i heard a yelp
"Ow! What-what are you doing here?!"

Warmly awaiting auntie Misumaru going to fix Reimu's loneliness problem with copius amounts of meddling

>>45467250
But look at all these "...", you can feel loneliness in her voice. She wants a boyfriend, i will go out! i will talk to her!

>>45467356
You will be her boyfriend. And the boyfriend of her entire platoon too.

>>45467374
I'm okay with that

>>45467356
She'll think you're a kappa spy and drag you back to the FOB for an enhanced interrogation. Is that really what you want? To be threatened with all kinds of torture by a girl who only comes up to your waist?

>>45467374
No! I only want to be her boyfriend!
Sharing is not caring!

>>45467263
Hopefully Kisami's quest goes a bit better

>>45467126
Anon will have again his fidelity tested with a bunch of horny tengus

>>45473556
remembered me of this, from the HSE

>>45473733
I found this image randomly on danbooru, I didn't realize it was the same kek

Lady Tamatsukuri was an interesting woman. She was a goddess, one who made her living from making jewellery. In a broad sense, I wondered if that made her Kisami's crafting goddess, since she was a jeweller too, but I decided that I'd maybe keep that secret to myself. Or perhaps I'd share it with Yamame so she could try and get Kisami back for all of her teasing once I got back. She had a very sharp, commanding presence. Despite being shorter than me, she still felt like she was towering over me and if she stepped toward me, I'd probably shrink back. Kisami didn't seem all that bothered, but I had the distinct impression that respecting that sort of gravitas wasn't something that she seemed to handle naturally. Once she'd finished explaining what an Izanagi object was - and I had made a show of getting it, even though I didn't really get it - She asked me what exactly I was doing here, yet again. So, I tried to explain from the top. "Ore? Not Izanagi Objects, but regular ore?" She looked over at Kisami. "And you're trying to help him make a ring? A...Wedding ring? This is...A very indulgent purpose for a very dangerous cave. The only ore you'd want is far below, near that girl who's been putting half the mountain in danger of collapse." I assumed this was the girl that Kisami had mentioned on the way up here, the one who'd attacked her before they'd managed to strike a deal.

"Yeah, yeah, I can handle her." Kisami said, tapping her head with her left index finger. "What I'm more worried about is the breathing situation. He's a human, after all." She shrugged as if me being a human was like having a cold, then looked back at Lady Tamatsukuri. "Have you...Er, got anything for that?"

"Me? For an anoxic zone?" The other woman repeated. "Why would I have anything for that? What fanciful thinking." I shrugged and said that if I passed out, Reimu would probably find me somehow. It seemed to happen most times I was in danger. "Reimu? Hakurei?" A little confused, I nodded. "Why would she specifically be looking for you?" Now I felt a little confused. We were basically family, I finally said. "...Family." Lady Tamatsukuri repeated, staring at me blankly. "Family? Reimu Hakurei doesn't have any family left." That got me just as curious about her as Lady Tamatsukuri was of me. She seemed to know an awful lot about Reimu, since she'd said that thing about her not having any family left in a very matter-of-fact voice.

Slowly, I asked her how she knew Reimu. "She wields my greatest work." Lady Tamatsukuri mouth curled into a very smug smile. "The Hakurei Orb is my greatest creation." I found myself very taken aback. The woman in front of me created Reimu's yin-yang orb? The thing she used for youkai extermination? Wasn't that one of the Shrine's heirlooms? The kind of thing that was passed down for generations? That must have meant that Lady Tamatsukuri was an old goddess. "It's rather rude to ask a lady her age, don't you know?" She told me in a tone where I couldn't quite tell if she was joking or not. "I was alive during the Age of the Gods, when objects were nameless and had no owners." I did find myself fairly amazed, and I was sure that she could see it in my face, because she puffed her chest out and looked, somehow, even more smug. "However, I am very curious as to why you have shown up here with a spider and not with your supposed family." I shrugged and said that she'd been distracted lately. It was seeming a little bit like this Misumaru Tamatsukuri might consider Reimu just a little bit like Hearn did, because they both seemed to have an interest in her beyond the usual. "Distracted? Distracted...How?"

Now I'd put myself in a situation where I felt like I was betraying Reimu's trust, so I did my best to downplay it and said that she'd was probably just busy with getting the Shrine prepared for Winter. "I see...Hm. Perhaps I shall have to see to it that the inheritor of the Hakurei Orb isn't getting lazy. She can't wield it if she's too distracted." That sounded like I'd probably made a mistake and sent an annoyed goddess after Reimu. Still, if Lady Tamatsukuri knew Reimu the way she seemed to - And, with her age, she probably knew more than a few of her relatives too - Perhaps it would be a good thing if someone else visited her.

"Well - That's enough about that. I'll deal with Reimu in my own time. Let's get back to you, shall we?" I nodded and said that I was hoping that I could go with Kisami to collect this metal. "You cannot." Lady Tamatsukuri told me very clearly. I frowned and asked her if she really did have a card that would let me breathe down in the depths of the mine shaft. She shook her head, revealing both arms from behind her back to be completely empty. "I did, but I don't anymore. I only carried it with me while there seemed to be a present danger of someone trying to get into the mineshaft. A certain black-and-white girl."

Oh, of course. Marisa definitely would try that sort of thing, I thought to myself. "While your ability to breathe is a concern, it is not my main concern. I am more concerned about your safety down there, especially as I now think that it would affect Reimu if you were hurt." I had been right, then. She did have some level of interest in Reimu beyond the Hakurei Orb. She cared about whether or not she'd be upset if I was hurt.

"Aw, c'mon, Lady Tamatsukuri!" Kisami piped up, making me jump. I'd almost forgotten she was there. "We'll be fine for a short trip!" She threw her arms around me from behind and rested her chin on my shoulder. I could only imagine that she'd made use of her ability to fly to accomplish that, because I was still taller than she was. "I'll keep him safe. My dear little sister would kill me, you, that girl down there, and probably half of Gensokyo if I let anything happen to him." That was...A very dramatic response. I resolved to do my best to not die any time soon. "So...You really don't have that card?"

"Honestly now, I'm trying to do you a favour..." Lady Tamatsukuri shook her head in exasperation. "Normally, I'd attack you just to get you out of here because if you're anything like Reimu, you're too foolhardy not to try and barge deeper in regardless. Alas, you've caught me at a bad time, and I've far too many valuable Izanagi Objects on me to be fighting off two idiots."

"Hey!" Kisami shouted crossly. Given that her head was still resting on my shoulder, it made me flinch. "Oh, er, sorry." She let me go and stepped away after awkwardly patting me on the shoulder. "I'm perfectly capable of handling that oomukade, thank you!" I looked over at her, raising an eyebrow. An oomukade was something I'd once heard of in Miss Kamishirasawa's history class. A giant centipede, feared by most and hated by all. Something to despise and stay far away from if it could not be killed. "Besides, I'm pretty sure she'll say I can just take whatever gold, silver, or whatever else she's stacked up down there with me. She's only interested in those dragon gems."

And there I was, with a great big weak spot to things that were hated by everyone else. Perhaps, I thought, it would be better if I didn't go down there, since I was almost certain that I'd end up trying to befriend her. Maybe she really didn't deserve the hatred she got? It sounded like she was mining away and not hurting anyone, after all. I opened my mouth, but Lady Tamatsukuri had cut me off. "After dealing with Reimu, I can see why you two consider yourself family. You really are just as foolhardy. You're thinking about going down there and talking to her, aren't you?" My mouth shut with an audible clack and Lady Tamatsukuri shook her head. "Honestly, I don't know why I even try..." I frowned even more than I usually did. "Look, just let Miss Kurodani here go down and get the materials in your stead. Mining sites are dangerous even if they don't contain dangerous oomukade, and it takes a very exceptional kind of human to weather that storm." She eyed me. "One who can defend themselves."

I coughed. Lady Tamatsukuri tilted her head, watching me. I tried opening my mouth, then coughed again. Kisami tried looking at me with some concern, but seemed at a loss to help. Finally, I choked out the question of what was happening to me. "I told you, didn't I? The mine's an anoxic environment. Even just here, the oxygen levels are already half of what they are on the surface." I tried to breathe in deeply and felt like there was a very heavy weight on my chest. "Now, then. Back to the surface, hmm?" I couldn't say I was entirely pleased about the way the whole encounter had gone, but at least Kisami would be able to go and find the materials. This was really no place for humans to be, and my hope that a solution would present itself didn't seem to be working out.

I heard Kisami say something to Lady Tamatsukuri, and then I felt her help me back toward the exit of the tunnels. Each step put more air back into my lungs and I breathed in deeply, sighing in relief. We weren't at the point where I could see the surface yet, but Kisami stopped me and sighed. "I'm really sorry." She told me, and I smiled weakly, saying that it wasn't her fault. I should probably have thought a little harder about a way to get into the mine considering I'd known that I wouldn't be able to breathe. I could have asked Reimu, or Marisa, or Tenshi. Just...Someone. "Ah..." Kisami sighed heavily, running her fingers through her hair. "Okay, it looks like we have no choice. I'll go down and pick up a bunch of metals that we can work with, then I'll meet you back up here. Okay?"

Breathing in deeply again, I nodded. "It's a shame that Lady Tamatsukuri didn't have the card, but...Well, I guess there's nothing much we can do. Do you think she's planning to go and bug the Hakurei Shrine Maiden?" I opened my mouth, but Kisami shook her head. "No, sorry, I'm getting off topic. I'll get going. You go on and get outside. Get some fresh air. That's the sort of thing you humans love, isn't it?" Close enough, I supposed. Of course, Kisami was incapable of letting me leave, even for a little while, without the mandatory round of hugs and kisses. Once I'd endured that, I began to stumble back outside, sucking in deep breath after deep breath.

My head was down, and I was rubbing my forehead as I felt the light of the surface begin to hit me, so I looked up gratefully. There, I found two very long and very sharp swords, both pressed against my throat. Each was held by a white wolf tengu, who were looking at me with narrowed eyes and suspicious faces. In front of me, two more white wolf tengu, watching with their arms crossed. Looking between them, I very slowly raised my hands. "Human." One of them muttered. "Went straight through our territory, then through the yamawaro’s. Where's your friend, human?" It was the tallest one who was asking the questions. She had a thin face, small eyes and a scar over the right of her forehead. Her hair was white, as were the rest of them, and it fell straight around her face, with one long strand going over her left eye. I very slowly looked down at the two swords still pressed against my throat, then back at her. After a moment, she waved her hand, and the two tengu holding the swords pulled back slightly, though they certainly didn't lower the swords. "Don't think for a second that you're safe yet. Speak."

Now feeling like the time for slow was over, I hurried through an explanation that I'd come with a jeweller from the underground to collect some material and we'd be leaving right after that. "No excuse for coming through our territory." One of the tengu holding the swords growled at me. She was shorter, with thick eyebrows and wild, bushy hair. "We should just throw you off somewhere above your human village." You know, I said. I felt like I'd done this whole thing before. "Oh?" The bushy-haired one said. "Make a habit of sneaking into other people's lands, do you?" I hadn't really meant it like that, but this was starting to feel like an interrogation, and I wasn't a fan. What were they planning to do with me, I finally asked. Miss Bushy-hair opened her mouth, but a call halted her.

The other white wolf tengu who wasn't holding a sword, a shorter one with her hair tied back, had called out and had a hand raised. "Hang on." She whispered something to the taller one. "Stupid clothes, dumb look on his face, shows up where he shouldn't? Isn't he that one the bosses told us to keep an eye out for?" I looked between them all, feeling mildly offended both on my own behalf and on Yamame's behalf, since she'd made the clothes. "Yeah, it's definitely him. Red coat and everything. Order came through from the crows, remember?"

The taller one looked at her smaller partner. "That Shameimaru?" That caught my attention and, happily, gave me a possible way out of this whole mess. I repeated Shameimaru's name, and the two with the swords got right back to pressing them against my neck. "Yes..." The taller one replied slowly, stepping forward with her hands clasped behind her back. "Don't think that we're just going to let you off since you repeated a name." I tried again, this time insisting that I'd met Shameimaru before and she'd been wanting to speak with me for a long while. "You'd say anything."

"No, no, I think he's right." The Miss Short-one replied. "She was in the pubs a few weeks ago, complaining that someone kept dodging her. I'm no betting wolf, but I wouldn't be surprised..." I tried asking them if they could put their swords down since I doubted that I could outrun them anyway. After a few moments, the taller one raised a hand, and the swords finally lowered, letting me breathe a sigh of relief. "Alright." Miss Short-one said. "We'll take him in. Give him to the crow daitengu. She'll know if Shameimaru really said anything." I opened my mouth, but the sight of the swords kept me quiet. "Good. That's some progress." She stepped closer, then produced a long strip of black cloth from her sleeve. "Can't have you knowing where the tengu city is." She muttered, slipping it over my eyes. I dared not move or try and shout for Kisami, who definitely wouldn't be able to hear me from deep in the caves. All I could do was hope that I'd be able to reach Shameimaru. She might have been a little creepy, but she was the only tengu I knew at all.

I felt incredibly worried about Kisami, who'd be coming out of the mine to find me gone and with no idea where I was. She'd be worried sick, most of all because of what Yamame's reaction might be, and she didn't deserve that. I had to find a way to get a message to her as fast as I possibly could. I felt them lift me up, and I swallowed nervously. Then, I could feel the air rushing past me, which could only mean that we were flying. It went on for some time, but I eventually felt us land when my legs slammed into the ground painfully. "Walk." I heard someone say, followed by two hands taking hold of my arms and marching me along. This continued for a while longer, and after several twists and turns, we arrived at...Somewhere. I heard a knock, followed by the door opening. "He needs questioning." I heard one of the wolves say.

"Questioning, hmm? My, my, my, how scandalous. A human, in the tengu city?" This voice was different. It was smooth as oil, with a sort of teasing quality. "I'm sure my lady will be delighted. Someone to punish? How lovely. Perhaps she’ll even let me have a go!" I felt someone else take my arm and drag me forward, but this felt warmer. A building? "In, in! Come along, Mister Human." I was marched forward, then through a few turns, and finally, I was forced down into a chair. Immediately, I folded my arms, happy to have them to myself again. I didn't dare try and take the blindfold off yet, though. "You just wait there, yes?" The voice told me, before I heard her footsteps recede. From there, it was silent. Or...No, not entirely silent. I could hear a sort of scratching sound.

After a few minutes, I got frustrated and reached up to pull the blindfold off. The sudden light made me squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, but I managed to blink enough to see properly after a moment. It seemed that all of the time spent going between light and dark in the caves with Yamame was really coming in useful.

This was...An office. Large windows, wooden floor, a massive desk opposite the chair I was sitting in. I wondered just what I was doing here, but then I noticed that the scratching sound had stopped, and I looked ahead of me. There, at the massive desk, was a woman. Deep blue hair that hung in thick strands over her left eye, a lighter blue for her dress. Over her shoulder was some sort of metallic thing, but I didn't know what it was. It had a large blue crystal of some sort inside. She had what looked to be a white turtleneck sweater on underneath the blue dress, just like the one I was wearing.

"Well, that look slightly longer than I anticipated." She told me, her voice a quiet murmur. It sounded like she could talk very loudly. "Tell me, why have a group of wolves delivered a human to my office?" I decided that if I was going to be interrogated, I'd better be in control, so I crossed my arms again, then followed by crossing my legs. I'd been caught outside the Rainbow Dragon Cave. "Oxygen issue?" The tengu asked me. "We were all waiting eagerly when that happened to the Hakurei Shrine Maiden." I scowled. Small talk wasn't exactly what I was here for. Leaning forward, I said that I'd been with a friend who was still down in the caves and would be worried when she found out that I wasn't there. "A friend, still in the caves? If she's human, you'd best give up. She's already dead." I shook my head. Not human. Youkai, and I wanted her either told where I was or brought here as soon as possible. "You aren't exactly in a position to make demands." They had brought me here. "...True enough. I certainly didn't plan to speak to a human today." The tengu slammed a fist on her desk, making me jump. "Tsukasa!" She roared, confirming my suspicions about the power of her voice.

"Yes, Lady Iizunamaru?" I heard that voice from before ask. I turned my head to see a fox. She had hair that fell in long strands across her face, and she wore a sort of body suit that went halfway down her biceps and thighs. It was a very strange look, and not someone I'd expected to see in tengu territory. "How may I help?" She looked at me out of the corner of her eye with a wild smirk. It felt a little…Actually, no. It felt very dangerous. “Does the prisoner need...persuading to talk?” I refused to give her the satisfaction of looking scared, and she turned her nose up at me after a moment, which I took as a victory.
"No, Definitely not. Go to the entrance of the Rainbow Dragon Cave. Wait for..." this Lady Iizunamaru looked at me with a raised eye. Kisami, I supplied. "Wait for this Kisami, and escort her to the residence of Aya Shameimaru." The fox nodded and bowed, then disappeared from the room. "There. Now, if you could cease the suspicions?" I held my suspicions for a few more moment before letting them go...For now. "I suppose you want to know who I am. Megumu Iizunamaru, daitengu. I imagine that the wolves brought you to me because you said that you needed to meet Aya Shameimaru." I slowly nodded. "She's mentioned in passing that she's been chasing someone up for a story, and it would seem likely that you are this someone." At least someone believed me. "Well, you do match the description she gave."

I asked what exactly this Iizunamaru was doing. "Far too much work to be messing around with a human, I can tell you that much. Unfortunately, I sent Tsukasa off to find your Kisami, so now I have no one to take you to Shameimaru's house." She thought for a moment, tapping a fountain pen in her hand against the table. "Fine. I'll take you myself. Put your blindfold back on." Seriously? "Yes, seriously. Humans aren't supposed to be in the tengu lands at all, let alone in the city. Unless you want me to render you unconscious instead." Her hand hovered over a large tripod leaning against the wall behind the desk. It looked very heavy, so I busied myself with the blindfold immediately. "Excellent choice." I heard her mutter, before I heard the sound of her footsteps. She hauled me to my feet seemingly with one hand, then began to drag me out of the room. At the door, I heard her stop, immediately followed by the clacking sound of tengu geta. "Shouldn't take long." She said, opening the door and dragging me outside. Here, I was apparently allowed no dignity, because I felt myself get lifted, then thrown over her shoulder like I was nothing at all.

On the plus side, at least I had however long the flight took before Kisami saw me. in this state

>>45477771
the pic

Well that went surprisingly well all things considered

>>45477771
>with thick eyebrows and wild, bushy hair
Going for that nicetack look i see

>>45477889
It was supposed to be this
Guess that's what letting it get to half three in the morning does to a person

>>45478028
>Guess that's what letting it get to half three in the morning does to a person
And you weren't ill? we won't be mad if you want to take a break for a day or more

Raep

All things considered that went too well for Anon, I was expecting him to be violated by tengu.

>>45478832
Writefag had no friendly yooks to bail him out this time, if he went that route anon would've been buried under 5 wolf tengu until Reimu comes kicking down the door with the entire Kurodani family

>>45477771
Wolf tengu sure love their blindfolds...

>>45477771
>>45477889
>>45478028
Worry not, I used cutting-edge Kappa technology to erase your mistake from the compilation.

>>45479722
Literally rewriting history.
History is written by the archivers rather than writefriends it appears.

>>45479722
Keine-sensei, stop using your powers for frivolous things!

>>45480108
That's explicitly what an archivist does, isn't it?
Akyuu is hard at work rewriting some scrolls after she accidentally spilled coffee on them at 3 AM.

>>45478832
He is being taken to aya's house, where he will probably be alone there with her. We still have a chance to see a tengu raping

>>45479058
they were probably lying about not letting him see the tengu city too it's just fetish shit

>>45480108
>>45480122
Hmm, it appears that my earlier theatrics were lost on you. I often forget how your kind, with your blissful ignorance and lack of discretion, can so easily walk the path to your own downfall. It's as though you never sat through a history lesson in your pitiful lives.
But I digress. As a respected scholar and village guardian, it falls to me to decide whether history should be devoured or created. Because let's face it: I am far more equipped than any of you to discern which events are too 'problematic' for your fragile, foreign minds to bear.
I strongly suggest you reconsider your actions, lest you find yourselves on the list of outsiders destined to become cupcake ingredients for youkai children.

>>45482961
>Hmm, it appears that my earlier theatrics were lost on you. I often forget how your kind, with your blissful ignorance and lack of discretion, can so easily walk the path to your own downfall. It's as though you never sat through a history lesson in your pitiful lives.
>But I digress. As a respected scholar and village guardian, it falls to me to decide whether history should be devoured or created. Because let's face it: I am far more equipped than any of you to discern which events are too 'problematic' for your fragile, foreign minds to bear.
>I strongly suggest you reconsider your actions, lest you find yourselves on the list of outsiders destined to become cupcake ingredients for youkai children.
that's why you ALWAYS feed her a rice ball with dew filling after a ZUN beer.

>>45478832
Anon is just lucky that tsukasa got sent to find the spider instead of bring him to aya.

>s-shameimaru... er...
>what? oh, my clothes? I wasn't expecting a visitor, but don't worry about that, please sit down
>o-ok

>>45483280
>

>>45483336
>so yamame and I went to bed and... I think we can skip this part of the story
>no, please continue. could be important for my article
>but...
>continue.

>>45483280
Damn bitch, you live like this?

>>45483391
*SNRKKK* "Hearn?! Are sure?! ahahahahahahahaha!"

We'll start sinking soon. I might as well have the next thread ready before writeanon posts his daily update.

>>45483655
>>45483699
>>45483988
3 dubs in a row!

>>45484014
bump of the death

>>45483988
I think if you start creating threads as soon as we hit bump limit the mods might get upset

>>45484143
Yeah, I always keep that in mind before posting.
Writeanon usually submits his updates around 3-4AM CET, which is when I usually go to bed, so I'll try to delay the thread creation as much as possible.
If we're still at like page 4 or 5 by then we'll just have to wait to play it safe.

>>45482980
Dumb Hakutaku should be banned from the Izakaya, always flooding me with guests so I can't get any friendship points with 2hus.

>>45484218
>Writeanon usually submits his updates around 3-4AM CET
wait, he is bri'ish?

>>45484266
No, he is from Gensokyo.

>>45484277
makes sense

Cover art of the latest KMS arc just dropped

It doesn't seem like the thread's going to die just yet.

>>45486536
wtf we are still on page 5? If you want I can sacrifice myself and make the thread

>>45486562
Probably better not to risk the whole thing being nuked if you ask me. It's going to sink very slowly anyway.

>>45486645
but it's going to be shit if writeanon has to post in this thread

>>45486714
not really, the thread will be up another day before it circles the drain

>>45486738
but nobody will see, I should create other or not?

>>45486956
Nobody would see? what do you mean, we're all here. Just be patient till page 10 before you start baking again

Iizunamaru was far less gentle than the white wolf tengu had been, which was saying something since they hadn't been very gentle at all. I felt the rough impact as she hit the ground, then felt it even more when she tossed me off of her shoulder and I slammed into said ground painfully. Fortunately, I'd had practice for this whenever Yamame had gotten frightened and dragged me halfway across a room before she'd calmed down, so I just rolled onto my side, breathed out harshly, then staggered to my feet and pulled the blindfold off.

Again, the harsh light almost blinded me all over again, but after a few moments, I managed to crack my eyes open just enough to see that I was surrounded by snow. A few more moments and I managed to open them fully and get my bearings. I was on a platform, and the snow I'd been seeing wasn't actually on the platform, but surrounding it from below, at the same height in the trees around us, and above in the branches. I looked around, confused, and finally put together that I was in the trees. The platform was built around the trees, and was well off the ground. I edged over to the side of the platform and looked down, then swallowed. It was all snow down there, and it was not a very short fall. Shaking my head, I turned and looked at Iizunamaru, who had her arms behind her back and a bored look on her face. "This," She began, sweeping an arm around her, "Is not the centre of the city of the tengu. This is off to the side, in the outskirts." I looked past her and could see a cliff face. There seemed to be a lot of walkways cut into it, and these were what then had pathways leading up into the trees. Somewhere, I could hear flowing water, and I wondered if that was where the real city was. I knew that the great waterfall, the Waterfall of Nine Heavens, run down the mountain from somewhere, and I'd thought that the tengu would have set up their home there, but they didn't seem to have done so. Presumably, then, I was somewhere even higher up.

I asked her what we were doing here, and a flicker of annoyance crossed her face. "Aya Shameimaru does not live in the centre of the city. She lives, as you might have guessed, on the outskirts. However, it is a breach of decorum to fly directly to another tengu's front door. We will walk from here." Iizunamaru stiffly indicated a walkway that connected to various trees and disappeared between the snow-laden branches. "Follow me closely." She began walking with long strides that left me rushing behind her. I saw now that she'd equipped very long-toothed purple geta for the occasion to go with the black socks that she'd presumably been wearing inside her office.

After a few minutes, I grew too curious to resist, so I asked Iizunamaru what exactly she did. She looked back at me for a moment, her red eyes narrowed and piercing, which was enough to keep me from speaking up for a moment. Suddenly, I recalled Shameimaru's words, once upon a time. Once, with a storm brewing on the horizon, she'd threatened to hand me over to her boss, only to decide that my peach-induced vulnerabilities would bore her stiff. The Iizunamaru I'd seen in her office hadn't quite sold that impression, but just the way she'd looked back at me then had done it easily. I decided hastily that I should do my best not to cross her, so I belatedly added an 'if you don't mind' to my question.

She watched me for a moment more, then turned back to the path we were walking across. I wished that I could appreciate the place more because it really did look good with the snow all around, but I was very aware that I was still technically a prisoner of some sort here, and I didn't really have the luxury of stopping to enjoy the sights. "I am the daitengu of the crow tengu. They're my subordinates and I'm in charge of them. The wolves brought you to me because..." She raised a hand, indicating that I was supposed to fill in the reason. I had heard those wolves saying that apparently Shameimaru was looking for me, so they were bringing me to Iizunamaru because she would know what to do with me. "Hm." Iizunamaru was silent for a few moments. The path we were following had gone between a lot of trees at this point and was in fact starting to descend and thin out.

I could see buildings below, near the mountainside. More importantly, I could see other people, presumably tengu, milling about. None were on the path we were using, but I could see pairs leaning against railings down on the streets below and talking, standing on watch in groups, and simply enjoying the snow. Truthfully, it wasn't all that far from what I saw people in the village do. Perhaps some tengu had more in common with humans than they would like to believe they did. There were other paths cutting through the trees above as well, and I could see a pair of white wolf tengu walking along one.

One of them glanced in my direction for a moment, then turned back twice as fast. I had a feeling that I was not particularly welcome here. "It is true that Shameimaru asked the white wolf tengu to keep an eye out for you. I believe she has failed to inform me of this because she believes that I will consider it a frivolous waste of time. She's right, but now that you're here, I suspect that the situation will only continue if I don't force you to meet with her." I wondered how Iizunamaru had known of Shameimaru's actions. "I have my own sources." She said shortly, refusing to say anything further.

And then, curiously, she asked me a question after we'd walked only a little further. "Why were you at the Rainbow Dragon Mine?" For a moment, I wasn't sure what to say, but I decided that if there was any tengu I could probably trust to keep a secret, it was probably the daitengu. I told her a short version, that I was in the mine with someone from the underground for ore from the mine. "What kind of ore?" She asked, her voice sounding far too casual to be true. I thought that I had an idea of what her concern was, so I told her that it was just gold and silver, instead of anything...special. "What did you need it for?" Here, I felt a little self-conscious and I wasn't sure if I should reveal the truth. It was special, I settled on. For a personal reason. Interestingly, Iizunamaru was silent for several moments after that. "...I see." She murmured before falling silent again for longer. I wondered if I'd somehow touched on something that was personal for her, too.

In that time, we descended from the walkway to a dense street where the snow hadn't been cleared away. Perhaps, I wondered, it was because everyone else could fly over it, so they didn't want to disturb it. Freshly fallen, undisturbed snow was rather pretty. Which only made it worse since I couldn't fly and now had to walk right through it all. Fortunately, there was no one else currently around to watch me, but I could hear the crunch of the snow beneath my feet on each step, and that was bad enough. Iizunamaru didn't seem particularly bothered by this and hovered just slightly above the ground, leaving me to step through the snow. Every few steps, I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching me.

After a few streets, Iizunamaru led me to a building which I assumed to be Shameimaru's house. It seemed, from what I could see behind it, to have a great view over the rest of the valley, though it seemed to be situated in a corner of the street that wasn't particularly used. There were a couple other buildings on the street, but I wasn't sure if they were actually homes or not. They didn't look very high-class, at any rate. "Shameimaru has been living here for a long time. Far longer than you've been alive." Iizunamaru told me. "The crow tengu tend to stick in one place once they like it." I nodded slowly. I'd assumed that Shameimaru probably lived in a fancy home with lots of space for her newspaper work. This seemed...Not quite like that. "Shameimaru doesn't do particularly well in the newspaper competitions. Never has." Her knuckles rapped on the door three times. "Shameimaru!" She shouted, her voice still making me jump.

"What!?" I heard a voice shout back. "I'm having a day off!" I heard stomping and crossed my arms without really thinking about it. Finally, Shameimaru threw the door open. I was surprised to see how informal and undressed she was. A shirt, but entirely unbuttoned, meaning only a miracle of clothing placement had kept her from being...visible. Luckily, I could tell that she was wearing a pair of brown shorts that looked like the kind that Yamame sometimes wore, but baggier and without any patterns on them. In her hand was a sake cup. "Come on, Lady Iizunamaru. Any more work and my feathers will fall off! Can't you come back-" She took notice of me then. "...Uh." I waved. "Uh?" She turned back to Iizunamaru, a questioning look on her face.

"Caught on the mountain, I believe." Iizunamaru said brightly, slapping a hand down on my shoulder. "Seems that he's your missing human, hmm?" Slowly, Shameimaru nodded with a vacant expression. "Call this a special delivery, then. He's got a friend coming your way whenever my assistant finds her. Do make sure they get home safely afterward, won't you?" She had a tone to her voice that made it very clear that this was not a question. Iizunamaru spun me around using the hand that was on my shoulder and with so little effort that it made me a little nervous. "Well, it's been interesting, if somewhat unwanted. Good luck and so forth." She nodded once before spinning on her geta and disappearing into the sky. I supposed that her decorum rule about not landing directly at someone's house didn't apply to leaving. Or maybe she'd just wanted to do an interrogation of her own before sending me to Shameimaru.

>>45487077
I think you're right, we can still repost the chapter in the new thread tomorrow

So there I was, staring at the half-undressed crow tengu who'd always been so mysterious and aloof on every other instance where I'd met her. Now, she just looked like she wasn't really sure what to do with herself, and worse, I could tell that she was getting cold. I asked her if she had really told all of the tengu to keep an eye out for me. "Uh...J-Just the white wolves." She mumbled. "Sorry - I'm not - I wasn't really prepared for this." I decided not to reply, but it was very interesting to see how different she was acting now that I'd randomly shown up at her door halfway up a mountain in the middle of the day. I asked her if she wanted me to just wait outside until Kisami arrived, though I kept Kisami's name quiet. "Outsi- Oh, er, no. Come in." She backed up a few steps and waved me inside. I could smell sake as I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. It seemed that Shameimaru had been spending her day off well. I'd emerged into a hallway, but barely had time to take my boots off before Shameimaru was ushering me into a different room.

The room I'd been ushered into was small and sparse. A small table in the centre of the room and a kitchen that looked like it had seen better days behind. Not many personal effects scattered about, though I saw a framed scrap of money nailed to the wall. I wasn't sure what it was, but knowing that she was a journalist with a newspaper, I had a suspicion that it might have been some money she'd been paid which had some sentimental value. She caught me looking at it. "That's - Er, my first ever sale. A bird youkai from somewhere near the Human Village." I smiled and nodded, but internally, I was really starting to re-evaluate Shameimaru with all of these reveals. She was starting to seem less like a mysterious force in my life.

The room, for example, wasn't very tidy, but there wasn't a speck of dust on that framed scrap of paper. That told me something about her. On the table, too. There was a bottle that was already nearly empty, copies of her newspaper, a few pencils next to a notepad, and a book. I recognized the book. It was one of Agatha Chris Q's novels, thought it was dog-eared and looked like it had been gone through, cover to cover, over and over until the pages were ready to fall out. I wondered if she simply didn't take good care of it, since the copied of her newspaper sitting on the table looked pristine, and she'd been careful to put the bottle of sake on the opposite corner of the table from the newspapers. I couldn't see anything in the room which suggested how she made her newspapers, which I assumed to mean that it was somewhere else.

"I wasn't expecting you to show up here like this." Shameimaru was saying, leaning down to pick up her sake bottle. "I'd have tidied up. Do you want a drink?" She asked me, offering the bottle to me. I looked down at it for a moment, then shook my head. No, I said. Probably best not to. "Are you sure...?" She trailed off, staring at me. After a moment, it started to become clear that I wasn't really being given much choice in the conversation, so I sighed and took the bottle. Thankfully, there wasn't much left, and my alcohol tolerance was very high. I decided to go through the whole thing at once, and found that it burnt and it was sweet, which was an odd sensation. It was also strong, far stronger than sake from the village would have been, and I wondered why Shameimaru hadn't mentioned that to me beforehand. While I was drinking it, Shameimaru was pulling a second bottle out of the kitchen.

"Let me just..." She ambled back over to the table then bent down and swiped the notepad. I wondered if she was planning to button her shirt up any time soon, because quite frankly, it was distracting. "Shall we go somewhere more comfortable?" She asked me. I'd been staring at the table again, so I snapped out of it and agreed. Shameimaru led me out of the room and back into the corridor. Now that I'd gotten a chance to look at it, I was quite curious. It looked like a style I hadn't seen before. All wooden panels on the walls and hard, wooden floors heading down toward the back of the house. There was a staircase - Also wood - which Shameimaru was now standing at the bottom of. "My be- Er, my workroom is upstairs." She pointed up the stairs. "Do you want to take that coat off?" I looked around me for a moment, then decided that I felt a little naked and defenceless without it, so I politely declined. "Oh...Okay." She nodded, then began heading up the stairs, stretching her arms upward as she went. It caused her shirt to lift slightly, and I caught sight of her lower back, where the top of the shorts she was wearing reached.

Something about all of this was really feeling very familiar.

Regardless, I followed her up the steps. It wasn't like I had much choice in anything until Kisami arrived, though I was starting to worry about why exactly it was taking her so long to arrive. It hadn't felt like that long when I'd been taken from the Rainbow Dragon Cave, though I supposed that my ability to accurately measure time had suffered a lot while I was blindfolded. I hoped that she was okay. Her having to tell Yamame that I'd disappeared would be bad, but I thought that it would probably tear my heart into little pieces if I had to tell Yamame that Kisami had disappeared.

So, feeling even worse, I traipsed up the stairs heavily and found myself on a dark landing. "There's no lights in here. Give me your hand." I felt her reach for my hand and though I instinctively flinched, I managed to relax enough to accept it. She pulled me along to a door which she opened to let light flood into the hallway from a window to the white sky and the snowy rooftops of the other houses outside. "There, that's better." She said quietly, shutting the door behind her.

This room looked to be her workroom. There was a large desk, though it looked less imposing and impressive than the one I had seen in Iizunamaru's office. On that desk was a lot of things that I couldn't even begin to guess at the function of, though I assumed it had something to do with Shameimaru's newspaper. A large board took up one wall, upon which were an even larger number of photographs of almost everyone I'd ever see, human or youkai or otherwise, with different photographs connected together by bits of string. There was a waste bin next to the desk which seemed to be overflowing with newspapers, and the chair at the desk looked a little ragged, like it was close to falling apart. The surface of the desk itself looked like it had seen more than a few nails hammered into it over the years, too. On the other side of the room was a bed, just about big enough for one person, or two if they didn't mind being sandwiched together.

"That's - Er, it's where I sleep while I'm working on something important." Shameimaru told me hurriedly. "I have a bigger bed if you want to see it." I looked at her oddly, then said that I was fine. "...Right. So, I want to collect my exclusive from you on the Eientei Investigation." She was opening the new sake bottle and taking a drink. The bottle was then offered to me, but I refused. "That means I need an account of everything." She told me to sit on the bed, which felt a little strange, but I did it anyway because again, I didn't have much choice. Shameimaru looked like she was about to join me for a second, but changed her mind and pulled her raggedy chair over and took a seat. Her shirt was still undone and threatening to become entirely non-functional, so I pointed it out. "It's hot in here." Shameimaru told me, shrugging. I really didn't think it was, so I decided to just stare at the ceiling and try to ignore the pit in my stomach. "Now, let's start with a dri-" And happily, there was a pounding on the door downstairs. Shameimaru actually growled out loud. "Oh, of all the times..." She muttered under her breath.

And then, a voice that gave me nothing but relief shouted. "Aya!" Reimu Hakurei yelled. "Get him down here within ten seconds or I'll destroy your whole damn house!" I exhaled a breath that I hadn't realised I was holding. The whole thing had been feeling very strange and I supposed that it was the knowledge that I was really stuck here against my will that was getting to me the most. It was easy to pretend things were okay, I supposed. "Ten!" Reimu yelled.

"Yes, yes..." Shameimaru muttered, getting up. Now, she suddenly seemed to find it worth buttoning her shirt up, and she took my wrist and pulled me from the bed. When she let go, her fingers slid across my hand slightly, which was uncomfortable in a way that made me skin crawl. Yamame had done the same in the past, but when she did it, it felt so much better. "Am I ever going to get my interview with you?" I shrugged as naturally as I could manage and said that it would have to wait, then I went for the door myself. I was down the stairs and at the front door in seconds, though I found that Shameimaru had somehow got there at the same time. She pulled the door open with a frown. "What, Reimu? I'm trying to conduct an interview in here." While she spoke, I forced my boots on.

Reimu stood on the other side of the door, her arms crossed and a murderous look on her face. She'd equipped the scarf she'd gotten from Hearn, which she'd had to wind around her neck a ridiculous number of times to keep it from trailing on the floor. Her outfit also looked to be one of the ones she'd got from Hearn, though I couldn't say what it was. Next to her was Iizunamaru's fox, who had a black eye and looked like she'd been knocked around a lot. Despite that, she had that same smile, which only widened when she laid eyes on me. "You lot have got a lot of nerve." Reimu growled. "Kidnapping a human? Keeping them here? I should go and knock some sense into that boss of yours."

"Oh, come on! It was hardly-" Shameimaru began. Then, faster than I could see, she was suddenly leaning to the side with one of Reimu's needles held between two fingers. "Whoa, you could put someone's eye out!" Clearly, being drunk had done nothing at all about her speed and reflexes. Reimu reached out and pulled me out of the door before storming toward Shameimaru.

Now that I was outside, I saw that there was someone else there. Long red hair completely frizzy and sticking up in every direction, and with her eyes looking a little red, Kisami looked like she'd had better days. Once she saw a chance, she'd leapt at me and wrapped her arms around me tightly. "Oh, don't ever disappear on me like that ever again!" She cried, clutching tighter. "I thought you'd gotten attacked by some youkai and dragged off, and then I'd have to tell Yams and - a-and..." She trailed off and buried her face into my shoulder, crying her eyes out. I staggered slightly, then managed to hug her and pat her on the back, telling her that I was fine. "After I'd calmed down, I remembered the tengu who were watching us on the way up." She sniffled, but allowed me to pull her off of me slightly. Rummaging in my coat pockets, I pulled out a napkin I'd stolen from the restaurant that Yamame and I had gone to in the Hot Spring Town and handed it to her. She took it gratefully and wiped her eyes, then continued. "So, I did something scary and decided to go to the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. And then, she," Here, Kisami indicated Tsukasa, Iizunamaru's servant, "Showed up at the Shrine. Miss Reimu had a fight with her, and then she told us where you were." I pulled Kisami into another hug and thanked her for getting Reimu and for being so quick about it.

"So this is what I get for doing Lady Iizunamaru's bidding, hmm?" I heard Tsukasa mutter under her breath. "Might as well go back to the Moriya at this rate." I wondered what that was about, but instead, I said thank you to her too, since she'd told Kisami and Reimu where I was. Tsukasa turned her nose up at me again. "I do Lady Iizunamaru's bidding, Mr. Human." She told me, turning and floating off into the sky. I hadn't realised she was floating at all, but I supposed that was because she was short anyway. I also wondered if Iizunamaru would be upset once she found out that Reimu had shown up, but I wasn't really all that bothered.

Speaking of, Reimu had apparently whacked Shameimaru over the head with her gohei and stormed back out. "We're leaving." She growled. "You," She pointed the gohei at Shameimaru, who was rubbing her head, "If you want your stupid interview, come and arrange it with me. He's not going anywhere alone with you." I got an incredibly warm feeling in my chest at Reimu's words.

"You're really overreacting, you know?" Shameimaru replied, sighing. "If I must, great Hakurei Shrine Maiden." She bowed deeply and just a little mockingly, then stepped back inside and slammed the door shut in our faces.

"Good riddance." Reimu muttered. "Come on. I'll yell at you later, once you've had a chance to calm down. You're coming to the Shrine with me." That sounded perfectly fine to me. She turned to Kisami. "You, er, Miss Kurodani, would you mind fetching Yamame and bringing her to the Shrine? I think he'd like to have her with him right now."

"O-Oh, er, sure." Kisami nodded clumsily. "Oh!" She exclaimed, fumbling in the pockets of her coat. "I got the stuff, by the way!" She presented a rock-looking thing that didn't really look like gold. It was...Slightly yellow, I supposed. "We're one step closer!" She hugged me yet again, then shot off into the sky.

Reimu watched her go, then shook her head with a sigh. "She's exhausting. Are all of Yamame's sisters like that?" She asked me. No, I said. Kisami was definitely unique in that regard. "I think I'd probably go insane if I grew up with a sister like her." I laughed weakly. "Come on, let's get out of this hellhole." Reimu went for the same sort of approach as Kisami and wrapped her arms around my waist before lifting me into the air.

We left youkai mountain behind, and I felt like I could breathe easy again.

>>45487113
>"There's no lights in here. Give me your hand."
>>45487113
>"I have a bigger bed if you want to see it."
>>45487113
>Her shirt was still undone and threatening to become entirely non-functional, so I pointed it out. "It's hot in here."
god tier chapter

>>45487113
>"There's no lights in here. Give me your hand."
>"I have a bigger bed if you want to see it."
>Her shirt was still undone and threatening to become entirely non-functional, so I pointed it out. "It's hot in here."
god tier chapter

Honestly i feel a little bad for Aya her, what the fuck just happened to her over the last 5 minutes?

god, I'm influencing writeanon so much that I'm like a second writer

>>45487475
She's canonically actually a bit of a loser. Loses the newspaper competition every time, no one really likes her, tries to publish news only to find out that her boss is the one perpetrating it so she can't do anything, etc etc.
So here she is, trying to get this big exclusive on the Eientei scandal, but her primary source has disappeared and she knows that every day is another day that Hatate could find the information with thoughtography. She also lives in the ass end of nowhere.
So she's gotten drunk, probably horny, and then her primary source shows up so she figures 'Hey, what the hell', only for Reimu to show up, cockblock her, beat her with a stick and take him home with her before she even got the interview, let alone the cock

Only managed to speak to him privately once
Whenever she tries to find him he is with Reimu or somewhere in the underworld
Finally find out he's been spending his days standing in front of the underworld entrance doing nothing
The one day she tries to find him there he's already being dragged inside by a small army of spiders
Oh and at some point he just waltzed back into Eintei
Twice
BOTH TIMES EXACTLY WHILE SHE WAS USING THE BATHROOM
Then one day he's with a spider just hanging around the village so eventually Aya goes fuck it maybe if she brings the spider too he'll come along
BUT THEN THEY JUST FUCKING VANISH
AND THEN HE'S BACK AT THE SHRINE
WITH THE SPIDER
WITH REIMU
WITH THE CELESTIAL
AND WITH YUKARI'S FUCKING GOLEM
so at that point she finally gives up
she half assedly tells the wolf tengu who she knows they think she's a looser to bring him over if they see him which obviously they wont
but fine it's whatever let's just spend the whole day drink it just fuck it all
but then the boss herself just brings him to her door like it's her birthday or something and aya's already tipsy and not exactly in the mood for work
but yeah fuck it whatever aya doesn't even care anymore
oh he's looking at her tits
yeah sure why not?
anyways
interview
and then someone knocks the door but it's probably just the spider
BUT THEN IT'S FUCKIG REIMU
WHAT IS THIS FUCKING GUY?!
IS HE A BAKENEKO?!
DID HE COME HER TO TAUNT HER?!
IS SHE EVEN AWAKE RIGHT NOW?!
AND THEN FOR NO FUCKING REASON REIMU JUST HITS HER IN THE HEAD AND LEAVES WITH HIM AND
AND
AND
and
blueEeeEeEeEe?.........

>>45487124
>>45487576
>>45487581
I never liked Aya but you guys are making me want to hug her, in the same way I never cared about Yamame until this story

Reimu will also be cock blocked from her anger once anon gives her the good news, doubly so when she realizes he did what he did after she put the idea in his head
Misumaru is there too

Next thread up story so far anon and writefag if you want to repost the last chapter >>>45488471

>13h after hitting bump limit, we're still at page 8
Curse you, Writeanon! A new batch of /jp/sies was abducted by Yukari and we cannot join them until you finish the KMS.

>>45488481
You are being hasty, /jp/ might still be too fast because of the invaders but not that fast.