And we're onto the the next part! This is a sequel to "Somewhere the Wind Cries," so please be sure to read that before continuing onto this.
Sanae thinks that time must pass differently in Gensokyo.
That, or her sense of time is just awful.
She loses track of the days that surely must have become weeks and maybe even months, and wonders why she feels the way she does. She finds things have mostly returned to normal; she resumes her shrine duties without difficulty, sees her worshippers and performs miracles, even goes to help solve an incident with the others. Things are even better now than when she left. She feels more confident, more powerful, more capable.
Or so she likes to tell herself.
"So, hey, did you guys hear a voice when you were in the mausoleum, too?" Marisa asks from across the kotatsu, a plate of dango half-eaten in front of her.
"Yeah," Reimu says from beside her, arms crossed over her chest as she rests her eyes tiredly. Sanae has noticed that she always seem to take a few days to recover after an incident, seemingly exhausted by the sudden change in pace from their usual quiet days. "I think it was Miko."
Youmu, who sits next to Sanae but distances herself from the table, sitting in seiza with a teacup on her lap, joins in, "She's an interesting person, isn't she?" her hesitant tone betraying her true thoughts despite her polite wording. "She claimed she could understand the desires in one's heart. Do you think that's true?"
"No way," Marisa scoffs, the last dango in her mouth, "She told me I have no self-control. What a load of bull."
No one bothers to point out the irony, but Reimu sighs and shakes her head. "I don't see why she would lie about that," she says, "I believe she's actually quite perceptive."
"She may be perceptive when it comes to one's desires," Youmu adds, "But perhaps she is not so skilled at interpreting what one's desires mean. She thought I was a hermit, and I couldn't seem to change her mind."
"Well, you are a little unusual," Marisa shrugs. Sanae doesn't realize they've stopped talking until she feels their eyes on her, and pulls her gaze away from the window. "You okay?" the magician asks.
"Yeah, sorry," Sanae says, waving off their concern with a small laugh, "Just distracted."
"So what did she tell you?" Reimu asks curiously.
"Oh, yeah! What kinds of desires do Gensokyo immigrants have?" Marisa raises a brow and grins as if expecting some dirty secret. Sanae rolls her eyes.
"I don't really remember what she told me," she lies. Marisa and Youmu seem to buy it, the disappointment evident in their eyes, but Reimu's gaze hardens suspiciously.
"You say you are here to collect faith for your shrine through my defeat," she'd heard Miko's whispers as she made her way down the mausoleum corridors, "But that is not what your heart is telling me."
"Anyway," Sanae says, hurriedly moving the focus away from herself, "I hear Myouren Temple is making a move now."
The occasional incident followed by one last battle to tie things up and then a brief peace time to convince the humans of Gensokyo that their heroes have come through once again-this is the cycle that Sanae has grown accustomed to, and what she feels comfortable with. Her little adventure to the outside world threw her off routine, and that's the only reason she feels odd now, she tells herself. Surely the outside world has forgotten about her by now, and when she visits again in a month or so, everything will be just like when she first arrived; friendly strangers on the street corner whose faces she recognizes. The flower shop will be doing well, Momoka will be in high spirits and greet her enthusiastically, "Welcome to Happy Hana! Can I help you find anything?" and Shuuichi….
There's no reason for her to think about him, actually. Whether or not he remembers her doesn't matter, because he was a youkai, and it wouldn't have worked out anyway. Still, she entertains the idea, wonders what might have happened if she could have stayed, if she had ignored everything she knows about being a youkai exterminator and given him a chance. She thinks she might have been happy.
Reimu is discussing the implications of a holy war when the door to the shrine slides open and a harsh gust of wind precedes the arrival of a tengu. Aya Shameimaru skids to a stop behind Reimu, holding her camera in a white-knuckle grip, eyes wild with the promise of either gossip or newspaper solicitations.
"Reimu, is Yukari here? She told me to meet her here," she says, talking a mile a minute despite her breathlessness and shedding black feathers all over the tatami floor. "This is the biggest scoop since I published the story on the Moriya shrine conspiracy,"
("Which wasn't true," Sanae says, going unheard as Aya continues to talk over her,)
"I already have the layout all figured out, it's going to be great! It'll be the front page story-better yet, it can be a special!"
"What is it?" Reimu asked, already on edge for another incident, "Myouren Temple?"
"Better," Aya says, beaming, "News from the outside world!"
Sanae feels her heartbeat quickening at the words. "You went outside the boundary?" she asks.
Loving nothing better than a willing audience, Aya wedges herself in beside Reimu despite the shrine maiden's disapproving glance, grinning conspiratorially and lowering her voice. "I was sent on a top-secret mission," she begins, "To be the first Gensokyo resident to witness and report on a special event unique to the outside world-the Dark Martial Arts Tournament!"
No longer able to feign disinterest, Reimu, Marisa and Youmu all lean over the table. "Dark...what?" Marisa asks.
"It's a fighting tournament," the tengu explains, "It's actually organized by wealthy humans, but all of the fighting is done by youkai."
"I don't get it," Reimu interrupts, "Do they pay the youkai? Why would they fight on their behalf?"
"Would you just listen?" Aya snaps, growing impatient, and the shrine maiden glowers but doesn't speak. "As I was saying," she continues, looking pointedly at Reimu, "The youkai enter the tournament in teams, and they fight consecutive battles. The winning team gets anything they want from the tournament committee. Of course, since this is the outside world," her red eyes sparkle in a way that is unique to the youkai, and the girls shudder, "They don't use spell card rules."
"So they fight to the death?" Youmu asks uneasily.
"Exactly. It's apparently a very popular form of entertainment. Humans and youkai both come from far away just to watch."
"Barbaric," Reimu murmurs, but Aya shrugs.
"It makes for good journalism."
"Is the whole outside just overrun with youkai?" Marisa asks, sounding more excited than fearful, "And do they fight all the time? Is it like every man for himself out there?"
"It's not," Sanae assures her, but finds herself ignored again as Aya taps a sharp nail to her chin thoughtfully.
"Hm. I don't know," she answers, "I didn't really see that much of it. The Tournament is held on an island, so the mainland might be different."
The mainland, Sanae thinks, barely able to suppress a smile, as if there's only one mainland in the outside world.
"You guys should've seen it," Aya says, grinning smugly in a way that implies she likes to be the only one who did, "It was incredible. The most surprising part was the winning team, though-it was made up of youkai and humans. The humans were pretty spunky, but of course the youkai weren't pushovers, either. One was a kitsune…."
Sanae tunes her out as she goes on to describe the carnage, though her eyes flick over the faces of the other girls, a mix of shock and horror. Sanae herself is still trying to figure out what Aya is talking about, because she's an "outside world" native, and she hasn't once heard of this tournament or anything like it. Youkai in the modern day are little more than urban legends outside of Gensokyo; of course they're still around, but they're quiet about it, and there's no way they have their own fighting tournament.
Then again, when she thinks of Shuuichi, she knows there are a few surprises in the outside world still, things she doesn't fully understand, like how a youkai can inhabit a human body and deceive her.
Not actively, she reminds herself. Shuuichi never claimed to be human, after all. She just assumed because of how handsome and kind and wonderful….
"Anyway, I took lots of pictures and notes," Aya says, and Sanae tries to pay attention again, "So now I just need to meet with Yukari, and then I'm going to start writing up a news story. I can't wait to print this!"
"You will not be printing this," comes the strangely stern voice of the boundary demon as the air over the kotatsu suddenly chills and a gap elegantly framed with red bows appears, sending out a ripple of distortion. Sanae and the others stumble back from the table in surprise, except for Reimu, who remains sitting peacefully where she was, either unfazed or unwilling to give a reaction as Yukari slowly climbs out of the gap, folding fan covering her mouth and her lower half hidden in time and space.
"Yukari," Reimu greets, "You sent Aya to the outside world?"
"I did. Desperate times," Yukari sighs.
"Desperate times?"
"Never mind." Her eyes show that she's smiling, but her voice makes it sound forced. "Could you ladies give Aya and I a moment? I'll let you know when we're finished."
Gensokyo's heroes exchange wary glances but eventually stand from the kotatsu and head outside.
"What do you think that's all about?" Marisa asks.
Reimu is quiet, eyes on the door of the shrine that Aya shuts with a wink, before she turns away. "I don't know," she says, though it's clearly still on her mind, "Sanae, you mentioned something about Myouren Temple earlier?"
"Oh. Yeah," Sanae says, "Well, I guess the youkai were concerned about Miko's resurrection even before all this, but now that it's a very real problem, I hear they're preparing some kind of response, calling in a youkai from…." She pauses, not having drawn the connection before. "The outside world."
Nobody speaks for a moment. Marisa is, of course, the first to break the silence. "That can't be a coincidence, can it?" she asks, "I mean, Aya just came in all excited about a youkai tournament in the outside world."
"I heard about it earlier today, but I didn't know about the tournament yet," Sanae says, "Now it seems hard not to connect the two."
"Yukari and Aya do not seem to want to share their information with us," Youmu says, crossing her arms over her chest, "We should investigate on our own and make a preemptive strike rather than wait for the danger to come to us."
"I agree," Reimu says, and Marisa lets out an enthusiastic, "yeah!" holding her broom over her head.
Sanae doesn't move.
"What about you?" Youmu prompts.
The wind priestess looks at her feet before meeting her friend's face. "Go on ahead," she says, "I'll catch up with you."
Marisa and Youmu charge on ahead, but Reimu lingers a moment, only leaving when Sanae gives a reassuring smile that vanishes the moment the shrine maiden is out of sight.
"Your desires are so noisy," Miko had said to her, "Numerous and fighting for dominance, they are opposing one another. You cannot even tell what it is you truly want anymore, can you?"
Sanae had stopped moving in the hallway then, eyes glaring into space since she couldn't see her opponent yet.
"And if you do not even know what you want," Miko said, "Then you do not really know who you are."
Word trickles back to Sanae over the course of the next day that the youkai from the outside world-a tanuki-was defeated and the threat neutralized. As she's sweeping the leaves from the stone path to Moriya Shrine, Kanako materializes a few feet in front of her, snake-like eyes narrowed in a way that tells Sanae she probably should have gone with the others to take care of it.
"You never went," the sky god says.
Sanae shrugs.
"You've been acting strangely ever since you came back from outside the barrier."
"No I haven't," Sanae says, too quickly, too defensively. "Look, that has nothing to do with it. The youkai wasn't a problem anyway. Reimu and the others handled it."
"If there is an opportunity to collect faith, you take it," Kanako scolds her.
Sanae throws the broom on the ground. "The number of people who came by the shrine for miracles today was no smaller than usual," she says, voice raising in exasperation, "We're not exactly in a faith crisis right now. We never have been. I perform miracles, I make daily visits to the human village so people don't forget we're here, and I preach about you and Suwako every chance I get, so why are we always scrambling for faith like it's running out or something?"
Kanako's eyes widen slightly in shock, and Sanae doesn't realize she's snapped at her for another moment. A light breeze makes her hair tickle the back of her neck, whispering something. She shivers.
"Sanae," Kanako says, voice dangerously low, "This is not something I feel I should have to explain to you. If you really don't understand, then let me assure you that it will make perfect sense someday."
"You always say that," Sanae says, "About everything. It's always someday, or some other nebulous deadline. Obviously, I'm a moron, because I don't get any of this stuff any better than I did when we first left for Gensokyo." Her throat tightens. "All this time, I've been doing things because someone else has told me what to do. You, or Suwako, or Reimu-somebody tells me what I'm supposed to do, and I've done it. But I don't feel…."
I don't belong here, the wind cries. She squeezes her eyes shut.
"I don't feel right," she chokes.
She wipes her face on her sleeve, trying to dab at tears that are only just forming. Kanako doesn't say a word, and when she looks again, the sky god has vanished, choosing to leave rather than explain anything.
Like always.
"Fine," Sanae mutters, "Fine! Fuck you! Fuck all of this! Fuck being a priestess, and...and…!"
A timid, high-pitched voice from somewhere behind her timidly calls her name, and Sanae whirls around to see Suwako crouched uneasily on the stone path, head tilted to the side, the eyes on her hat staring at her in what she imagines is a concerned manner.
"Wh-what?" Sanae asks hoarsely, embarrassed at her outburst being witnessed by the generally more sympathetic of her two gods.
"I think they're calling for you at Hakurei Shrine." Sanae nods, bending to pick up the broom and put it away. "But maybe you shouldn't go right now."
"No, it's fine," Sanae says, clearing her throat, "I should go. I need something to do."
Suwako's large, childlike eyes stare up at her and Sanae has to look away, feeling as though the earth god might see something Sanae doesn't want to show her. "If you're certain," Suwako says eventually, and Sanae takes that as her dismissal.
To Sanae's surprise, Yukari is there, too, leaning out of her gap to reach for a teacup. "There you are," she says. Sanae notices Reimu sitting at her usual spot, but something's wrong. She doesn't look anxious like when there's an incident to be solved or agitated like when one of her youkai guests is causing problems.
She looks frightened.
"Moriya priestess," Yukari says, drawing her attention back to her, "We have another incident on our hands."
"Already?" Sanae asks.
"Yes. And it's not one Gensokyo is well-equipped to handle, because the danger comes from outside."
Sanae has heard that word in the last couple days more than she ever did in the last few months combined. She's starting to wonder if Marisa's mention of it not being a coincidence might have some weight. "What do you mean? What's the problem?"
"It's the barrier," Reimu says anxiously, "Yukari thinks it's in danger."
A silence settles over the room. Sanae looks between the two of them and waits for someone to speak, but not one does. "The barrier?" she repeats in disbelief, "What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing," Yukari says, "Yet."
"And what does that mean?"
"I'm not certain." Sanae has had just about enough of vague warnings from powerful, supposedly omniscient beings, but Yukari continues before she can say as much, "I hope you haven't gotten tired of the outside world already, because I'd like you and Reimu to go there and investigate." Reimu looks like she'd rather die. "The Great Hakurei Barrier is not something that's easily disturbed," the boundary demon says, and Sanae settles in for a long story. "It has existed for centuries now, and, aside from the occasional, odd incident," here, she pauses and looks pointedly at Sanae, who only stares back, not feeling particularly happy with being labeled an occasional, odd incident, "has held up quite nicely. As someone familiar with the barrier, I can tell the difference between a minor fluctuation and a major shift. And this is not something to overlook."
Yukari closes her eyes, pausing for a moment, and Sanae is perturbed at just how uneasy even the boundary demon looks. "It's little more than a rumor," she murmurs, "And a tremor. Portents of things to come. Unfortunately, I'll have to leave the explanation to someone else."
"Wait," Sanae says, standing, "You can't just-!"
Before she can get another word in, the air in front of her distorts as a hole in reality opens and closes with a ripple, and Yukair is gone.
"That's it?" Sanae asks, turning on her heel to look at Reimu. "Everyone tells me to hurry up and come home, and then I get some vague nonsense like this telling me to go back?"
The shrine maiden frowns. "Yukari has a contact in the outside world," she says simply, "For once, we shouldn't hold it against her for making a hasty exit. She's worried, that's all; if we fail, she's prepared to maintain the barrier singlehandedly."
Nobody says what they're thinking, which is that the power necessary to maintain such a barrier would turn a human into a lifeless husk in moments, and even someone as powerful as the boundary demon would suffer greatly to attempt a similar ordeal.
"If this is as serious as you guys are saying, I don't understand why we're not getting more help," Sanae says, "Shouldn't we go get the others?"
"No," Reimu sighs, sounding distressed, "Yukari and I have spoken on this matter extensively, and we agreed that only sending you and I is the best move." She pauses. "Because then," she continues, voice suddenly timid, "If we fail, someone will still be here to protect Gensokyo."