The Precious Thing

by Cyberchao X

Disclaimer: Own Touhou? Nah, I've never even played it. Just a longtime troper who decided to see what all the memes were about, and I got hooked. All I know is what I read on TVTropes, found out from watching Let's Plays of fanmade Touhou-themed remakes of other games, and read in this fanfiction archive (which was disappointingly short.)

You're welcome for making it just a tad longer.

…K+? Really, CCX? Yes, really. I know I had the epiphany about my lemons getting better numbers, but I'm not screwing around, pun intended, with characters I barely know. (Note: I had to re-write that sentence in order to keep it K+. Man, it really would have been embarrassing to have a K+ fic bumped up to T because I couldn't control my mouth in the A/N.)

Uh, anyway, let's start!

"Good morning, Alice!" Marisa Kirisame cheerfully announced as she entered…without permission.

"Okay, what are you here to steal this time?" Alice Margatroid replied drolly, having gotten used to the witch's many visits. It seemed like she was showing up every day now.

"What? Can't I be here just because I like being with you, ze?" Marisa feigned innocence.

"Answer the question."

"Whatever is convenient. The item itself isn't the important part. All that matters is that it's a memento of my latest visit."

Alice looked at her, puzzled. "…You're hopeless. You're here so often that you'll have taken my entire house within a few years if you keep this up."

"If I did that, would you come live with me, ze?" Marisa asked hopefully.

Alice sighed. "I just don't get it. From what I've heard, you're still taking stuff from Patchouli and Reimu and such as well, so why must you come here every single day and leave with more than you arrived with?"

"Come on, you know how to stop me from leaving with your stuff."

"…Enlighten me."

"Don't make me leave."

"…What?"

"You heard me, ze. Heck, you'd occasional be reaping the benefits of my, um, tendencies."

"Kleptomania."

"Yeah, whatever. So, how about it?"

"This joke is getting a bit stale."

"Alice, Alice, Alice," Marisa said, stroking the puppetmaster's head gently and instinctively making her check to make sure she wasn't suddenly missing any hairpins, "I'm not joking, ze. Don't you get it?"

"You sound like you're confessing your love for me or something," Alice replied. Marisa remained pointedly silent. "If you really cared for me so much, you wouldn't always be taking my stuff."

"Come with me, Alice. There's something you should see." Before Alice could protest, Marisa had dragged her out the door, and they set off flying back to Marisa's house.

"Still as messy as ever, eh, Marisa?"

Marisa blushed. "Hehehe…yeah, I know. It's not all as random as it looks, though…" She showed Alice to one specific room.

A number of piles of items were against one wall, looking to be as haphazardly distributed as all the rest. "Uh…what am I looking at?" Alice asked.

"There's a method to my madness, ze."

The left-most stack was shorter than the others. Alice looked at it, and realized that all of the items in it were things that Marisa had stolen from her, and recently—some of them, Alice hadn't even noticed were gone. She looked over to the next stack, and the next one…and every last one was filled with her stuff, each one having been in Marisa's possession longer than the previous one. "You're starting to creep me out." She went to the bottom of the right-most stack. "So then, this is the first thing you took from me?"

Marisa shook her head. "Second. The first is far too precious to me to put in a pile with all of the others." Alice noticed Marisa subconsciously fiddling with something in the general vicinity of her chest, and the significance of the gesture suddenly dawned on her. "This is so unlike you, Marisa," she said.

"Hehe…yeah, I know…I don't get it. There's just something about you…being with you just makes me…happy."

Alice thought about this. She thought about what a typical day was like for her. Marisa's unwanted visits had become a part of her daily routine. And besides that, who did she talk to? Mostly just Shanghai and Hourai, two dolls that she herself had made, in part to help take care of the house, but also to keep her company. Lost in her own thoughts, Marisa didn't even notice Alice become pensive. Alice broke the silence, "Well…you certainly could use a bit more organization in your life. Maybe you should stay with me. I could use the company…"

"Really? Oh, Alice, thank you!" Without warning, the witch kissed her. "Th-that…that was my first kiss," she thought. Suddenly a thought dawned on her, and she started laughing. "What's so funny, ze?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that you've done it again. You really just can't help but to steal from me, and now you've stolen my first kiss."

"Well, I'd rather steal your heart away, but I suppose this is a good start. Want me to give it back?" she added mischievously.

Alice thought about this. "…Sure," she said, gently putting an arm around Marisa and kissing her.

Well, that's that. I love the fact that the phrase "the precious thing" is so vague, because it really could refer to anything. (An M-rated take on this idea may follow eventually.) I know I probably misused "ze". I really do hate writing for characters with a verbal tic or other idiosyncratic way of speaking, but this was just too good to pass up. I'll probably leave it out if I write a second Touhou fic, though—we'll see. Until next time; ja ne!