Ever since Suika Ibuki had taken up residence in the Hakurei Shrine, the shrine maiden had gotten reluctantly used to her variety of moods. The oni was often convivial, sometimes giddy, occasionally angry, and now and again passed out cold, depending on the quantity of alcohol she had downed in the previous hour. But for the past few days, she had been showing Reimu a new side of herself. Ordinarily, Reimu was something of a "my pace" kind of woman, not one to pry into people's business unless it fell within her professional responsibilities or it interfered annoyingly with her personal space. But there came a time when even the most uncurious woman could not hold back.
"You," she declared, "are moping."
"Eh?"
"You heard me. You walk around here with a frown on your face. You sit there glumly. You sigh a lot. It's hard enough to get anyone to come up to this shrine except for youkai and broke people needing help with incidents. Do you realize what it'll do to our reputation if it gets out that there's a crabby oni hanging around?" Come to think of it, I'm surprised Aya hasn't written about it already. "So what's wrong?"
Suika sighed.
"Ah, it's nothing."
"It's definitely something."
Suika sighed again.
"It'll sound stupid."
Yes. Yes, it will, because it is something in my life and I live in a place which is literally the antithesis of common sense.
"Who cares? Everything sounds stupid to someone. And maybe talking about it will make you less mopey."
"I've been stone sober for three days straight."
"...Is that even possible?"
"Told you it'd sound stupid."
"No, but, I don't understand. I've seen you drink from that gourd of yours lots of times lately. Have you built up so much tolerance that it doesn't work any more? Or is it some kind of curse? Let's face it, the ability to sit down and drink peacefully together is one reason why youkai can get along with each other and keep from making too much trouble, so if someone wants to disturb Gensokyo's peace—"
"Nah, it's nothing like that. It's just...here, take a swig."
She passed the gourd to Reimu, who looked at it dubiously, then shrugged and tossed back a mouthful.
"Wait, this isn't sake. It's apple cider!"
"Well, it's fall, right, so I thought I ought to drink something seasonal. So I asked Wriggle, you know, the firefly girl, to find me a cider bug for the gourd. And she did, too, only..." Suika shrugged.
"It's not hard cider. It hasn't fermented."
"Yeah. I guess I should've been more specific."
"So why not just go back to your old sake bug? You didn't lose it, did you?"
"Nah, it's in a cage out back. Probably appreciates the vacation time."
"Well?"
"It's just, well, it took Wriggle a week and a half to scare up this one for me, and I don't want to hurt her feelings after she went through all that. I mean, it's not like I don't like the taste; it just doesn't have that kick to it, y'know?"
"Hmm, that's a problem. It is really refreshing, too," she noted, and took another drink before returning the gourd (she was a little thirsty, after sweeping the steps and walk free of fallen leaves for the past hour).
"Yeah. Just, well, it's not alcohol. A girl needs something stronger to stay warm once the summer passes, y'know?"
Reimu sat down on the steps next to Suika and started thinking the problem over. This was not the sort of thing that could be properly resolved by direct methods. It called for subtlety.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually wish Yukari was here right now."
She glanced around, but the gap youkai did not immediately pop out of thin air at the mention of her name the way Reimu half-expected.
"Oh? Figure she'd know a sneaky way out of this?"
"Uh-huh. I mean, if you just wanted to drink cider, you could have made cider. We have apples in Gensokyo. Asking Wriggle for a cider-making sake bug meant that you wanted a lot of cider. She'd know something was wrong if you just had a couple swigs and switched back." She thought it over, then snapped her fingers. "Wait a second; what if we had a party?"
"Eh?"
"A seasonal festival! Then you'd need all that cider to share with everybody who came! And once word got around, maybe we could actually have people come up here to try it." And...dare I even think it...actually leave a donation?
"Now, that sounds like a pretty good idea. Too bad I can't use my powers to just call everybody together any more."
"Yeah, it's bad form to ask you to do the same thing that caused the incident we had to take time and trouble to stop." She had her pride as the shrine maiden, after all. "But we want it to be a big event, so everybody can enjoy the cider and at the same time give you a good excuse for saying, 'that's what it was for.' So we need to make sure that as many people as possible want to come."
"It'll have to be word-of-mouth, then. Get the word out to a few people, and let it spread, and sooner or later everybody'll want a taste," Suika decided. "Why don't you offer some to those folks from the Scarlet Devil Mansion. They're stopping by later, aren't they?"
"Just after sunset," Reimu confirmed. She supposed that it only proved a point, why everyone in the human village thought she ran a shrine for youkai. Here she was, counseling the oni who freeloaded at the place about how to throw a festival where dozens of youkai could throw a party, and part of her strategy for doing that was to take advantage of the vampire and minions stopping by for tea. These may have been civilized days in Gensokyo, where humans and youkai managed to for the most part get along with anyone actually getting seriously inconvenienced, but "extermination" was not supposed to mean "invite over on a social call."
"It's definitely all Yukari's fault," she decided.
"Yeah, probably," Suika agreed.
"Wait, how do you know what I was thinking? Do you get satori powers when you're clear-headed?"
"Nah, I just figured that it's a good enough guess whatever you were saying."
"Now, that's just not nice," a voice came from behind them.
"Gah! What are you doing!?"
Yukari Yakumo's full lower lip drew into a pout.
"Is that any way to talk? I thought you wished I was here?"
"...I need to learn to shut up."
Yukari squeezed in between the shrine maiden and the oni, apparently believing that Reimu's personal space bubble ended just inside her skin.
"Want some cider?" Suika offered, passing the gourd.
"Thank you. Now, you see, Reimu, that's how you should welcome a guest."
"That presumes you're welcome."
"Someone is in a mood."
"We're all kind of mopey around here," Suika explained. "Me from a lack of sake, and her from...actually, I don't know why. She just had a pretty good idea to help me out."
"And I will now explain to the newly arrived youkai how in order to help another youkai I am about to offer cider to a youkai to help spread the word for a youkai festival to be held at a shrine that's supposed to be dedicated to exterminating youkai. Some days I think Marisa and Sakuya are the only humans that even know the way here!"
"There are a lot of stairs," Yukari observed. "It's easier for people that can fly to visit." But though she made her pithy remark lightly, she let her hand rest on Reimu's forearm for a moment in a silent offering of comfort.
"And the vampires especially bug me!" Reimu fumed.
"Really? I thought you got on quite respectably with Remilia."
"It's not that. She's no worse than anyone else, and less trouble than some. It's that, well, I don't understand why they're here in Gensokyo at all?"
"How do you mean?"
"You'd know more about this stuff than I do, but...the way the border works, if something is reduced to fantasy by the belief of the outside world, then it appears here in Gensokyo. The Great Hakurei Barrier has as an inherent part of its structure the boundary between reality and fantasy, after all."
Yukari nodded.
"That's quite right."
"So, okay, I sort of get that, what with people not believing in obscure youkai legends and local deities and things like that. But from what Sanae says, vampires are huge in the outside world. They've got books and plays and...what's that she called it, movies? Apparently you can't go into a bookstore without half the best-sellers being vampire books. And they're so big out there that there are plenty of people who think they're completely real. Vampires wouldn't get brought into Gensokyo by the power of the barrier; they'd have to want to come here, like, well, like the Moriya Shrine folks themselves."
"Hey, come to think of it, you're right," Suika marveled. "And Remilia, well, she kind of likes playing the big shot. There's a bigger audience and less competition on the outside, right?"
"How unkind to say," Yukari chimed in, which got her a look from Reimu.
"True, though. So, what brought her here? Why come to Gensokyo at all?"
Yukari tapped her lip with a forefinger.
"I do wonder about that..."
"...You know perfectly well, don't you?"
The youkai sage smiled brightly.
"I think that every woman is entitled to her secrets, don't you? Or do you think that I should tell you all of mine?"
"...If you told me all of your secrets, I'd probably die of old age before you got halfway through."
"Probably," Yukari agreed.
"Definitely," said Suika, who'd known her a lot longer than Reimu.
"Ahh, I'm surrounded by people with such a low opinion of me."
"Hey, you could have sat over there."
Reimu groaned at Suika's play on words. If this was what sobriety did to the oni's sense of humor, then she needed to get some alcohol into her quickly.
"All right, then, I'll give you a hint." A gap appeared and Yukari reached in up to her elbow. She fished around for a few seconds, then retrieved her hand, bringing a book with her. The cover was made of slightly thick paper and was mostly black, with splashes of white and red. "This was published in the outside world the year before the Scarlets and their servants came to Gensokyo."
"What, did she write it or is it about her?"
"Just read it, and then think for a while about the other thing that the Great Hakurei Barrier does for the youkai of Gensokyo."
Reimu didn't have to think too hard about that; as the Hakurei shrine maiden she knew more about the functioning of the Barrier than nearly anyone. Outside of Gensokyo, youkai came into being in answer to humanity's fears and beliefs, and were shaped and changed by the shifting of those beliefs, while inside the isolated space created by the Barrier, they could remain themselves, answerable only to her own nature. But what that had to do with a book she didn't know.
"Can't you just say it clearly for once, Yukari?"
The blonde youkai pretended to think it over, then beamed at Reimu.
"No, I don't think so. I probably shouldn't have said anything at all; I'm sure Remilia would be terribly embarrassed."
"Then why tell me at all?"
"You know, when you scowl like that, you get the most adorable little wrinkle just between your eyebrows, did you know?"
"I should have known better than to ask."
"And just think of all the fun you'll have figuring it out. Isn't that more entertaining than sweeping leaves? And after all, you need something to do while I'm asleep this winter."
In the next moment, Reimu and Suika were alone on the shrine veranda.
They looked at each other, then rolled their eyes and sighed.
"Yukari," the two of them chorused.
"Come on, we need to get ready for our guests," Reimu said.
"Hey, I'm just the freeloader here. They're coming to see you."
"Yes, but you're providing the drinks, so that makes you a hostess as well. And this time, you're going to do your share of the work!"
"Eh, fine; it's my booze supply at risk, anyway."
They got up and turned to go inside. After a moment's hesitation; Reimu picked up the book and took it with her.
She didn't start reading it right away, more out of stubbornness than anything else, she supposed. Eventually, one evening when she was bored, she finally opened it up and gave it a try. She didn't make quick progress, though. While the language was easy to understand—the book appeared to have been written for a teenaged audience, similar to what Sanae called "light novels," and so was easy going—that didn't make the book itself simple. Not only was it from the outside world, but it appeared to be a translation of a foreign work, so not only had it come from the outside world but was set in a different country altogether, two separate cultural gaps that often made it difficult for Reimu to understand why they were doing certain things. There were references to strange technology as well, the kind of things the kappa or Kanako were meddling with, and she didn't always understand their functions even from context. But having begun, Reimu's stubbornness kept her at it, and she made a point of reading a dozen pages or so each night, until fall passed into winter and she finally got through with it.
While finishing the book gave her a sense of accomplishment, though, it didn't give her any insights on why Remilia had come to Gensokyo. Part of her wanted to just fly over and ask the vampire face-to-face, while another part just wanted to shrug and leave it alone. Yukari's games were like that; one was never really sure if you were better off playing or avoiding the whole thing, let alone which she expected of you in the first place.
Then, one morning as Reimu was clearing the steps just in case the shrine got any actual human visitors, she saw the ice crystals in the new-fallen snow glittering beneath the brilliant sun, and she broke into a smile.
"So that's how Flandre got those wings," she said with satisfaction.
Somewhere far from there and yet right next to her, the hibernating Yukari chuckled in her dreams.
~X X X~
A/N: ...Yeah, I went there. ^_^ But when you consider that EoSD came out in 2006, just one year after publication, well!