Every other day, between the hours of four and ten PM, you could hear the yelling all throughout the neighborhood. The yells between two teenage kids penetrated the walls of their well-insulated suburban house.
"Brett, stop leaving your crap all over the living room!"
"You're not my mom! Clean it yourself!"
You'd swear little trivial things like leaving soda cans on the floor, not turning off the water faucet, leaving refrigerator door open were on the same level as murder. Brett and Sara were always at eachother's throats: Brett wanted to laze around, play video games, do what he calls, "live his middle school years like a middle schooler," and Sara wanted him to grow up. Mind you, Sara was a freshman in high school and Brett was two years younger, but when Sara was his age, she was already working on remote control robots.
Well, she never finished any of them, but hey, it was better off than what Brett was doing.
"Brett, turn down that damn game," she'd yell, "It sounds like a warzone in here!"
"How else am I supposed to play Call of Duty without the volume at full blast?," he'd ask, "This is war!"
Sometimes, she'd unplug his controller and hurl it across the wall, or shut off the TV, or just downright unplug the power. Then he'd hit her, and she'd hit him.
She'd yell, "Stop wasting your life!"
He'd yell, "I wish you were dead!"
The fists would fly a little more, and then one of them would return to their room. Most of the time, it was Sara. That day, it was Sara first and Brett second.
Sara returned to her room, locked the door, turned on the radio to the classic rock station, and sulked at her workbench. Sara wanted something uplifting, and that day, it was AC/DC's rather somber "Hell's Bells."
Just concentrate on the guitar riffs, she thought, still hurt from the fight.
She sighed and looked around at her current projects: a hovercraft, a glider, a small catapult, and a robotic caterpillar that, when finished, would inch along. These projects reached back to her middle school days, and she had never finished any of them. Sometimes, she'd get more ideas, write down a laundry list of more things she could develop, but in the end, she never got around to any of them. Even then, if she started yet another project, she'd never get around to finishing any of them.
It's funny, she thought, I keep telling Brett to stop being lazy, and here I am with all of this crap.
She toyed with the robotic caterpillar, tweaking the leg settings, but then just pushed everything else away after not feeling up for it.
Maybe I should finish something for once. I want to be an example for Brett. I want him to follow in my footsteps... but am I really somebody Brett wants to follow?...
The whole neighborhood knew Sara hated Brett: their endless fighting made that plenty clear. The only one that didn't believe Sara hated Brett was Sara herself, and the fact nobody else believed her, not even their own parents, hurt more than any insult or punch she could ever throw at Brett.
One day, I'll get to tell Brett, "I'm so proud of you, I'm glad you're my brother, and I've always loved you."
One day...
Sara got up when she heard a strange hum sound Brett's room. She got out of her chair and yelled, "Brett, what was that?"
"Mind your own business," he yelled.
By then, the song on the radio changed to Dire Straights "Money For Nothing," but Sara switched the radio off to listen into Brett's room. She heard a muffled conversation: the speaker sounded female.
She yelled, "Does mom know you have somebody over?"
"I said mind your own damn business," he yelled back.
She sat back down and stared at her stuff, thinking about just getting back to work, but in the background, she heard that muffled conversation through the door. After she couldn't take it anymore, she took a deep breath, left her room, and walked over to Brett's door. She knelt down to the carpet, put her ear up to the crack of the door, and listened.
A womanly voice said, "Aren't you tired of your sister?"
"Of course I am," he said, "I'd give anything to get away from her."
That much is obvious, she thought.
"In Gensokyo," the woman said, "you'll never have to worry about school, homework, your parents, or that monster of a sister of yours."
Sara listened more intently: she didn't know whether this was some kind of game or cryptic codeword or something sinister.
He asked, "Can you take me there?"
The woman said, "Yes, and soon as you are ready."
The hum sound bellowed from his room. A wind rushed under the door.
What the...?
"Let me get my games," he said.
"You won't need them," the woman said, "There's no power-"
The door swung up, and Sara looked up to see Brett, a blonde woman in a purple and white dress, and what looked like a giant void into a horizon of inhuman, demonic eyes. The sight made Sara scream and crawl back.
"Oh dear," the woman said, folding her arms, shaking her head.
"Sara," Brett yelled, "Out of my way! I'm off to a fantasy world and I'm bringing my games!"
Before Sara could yell at Brett, the woman said, "You'll have nowhere to plug your console in. If you're really interested in going to Gensokyo, you'll just follow me through this gap." The woman with blonde hair and glowing eye slits looked down at Sara and floated towards her. Sara would have hyperventilated if she could breath at all. She said, "I'm sorry for doing this on such short notice, Miss Letrain, but my realm is in need of your brother. If it makes you feel any better, consider today the last day you will ever have to get into an argument with him."
Sara wheezed through her fear, "Brett, please, don't go with her."
"Make me," he said.
The woman said, "Brett, I think it's time to go."
Sara yelled, "Please don't take my brother! Please! I'll do anything!"
The woman said, "I'm sorry, but even if I were to turn him back, he would never want to stay here with you. I'm doing him a favor. Farewell."
Sara continued screaming, "Wait! Wait!," as Brett and the woman crossed into the purple void. The void closed shut with yet another loud hum.
Sara sat in the hallway for a while, confused, shocked, scared at what she had just witnessed. For a while, all she could hear was the air conditioner, the empty house, and her pounding heart...
The neighborhood then heard screaming again: this time, it was just the girl, alone, screaming for hours, and hours, and hours.
When Sara's parents came home, of course they didn't believe her some monster, alien, whatever came and swallowed Brett into a purple void. They only assumed it was a prank or that he was at a friend's house.
Then, three days passed, and Brett was still gone. Then a week. Then a month. Her parents just assumed he ran away and put all of the blame on Sara for her constant battering of Brett. Missing alerts went out, but Sara knew nobody would find Brett: he was off in what was probably another dimension.
Sara's grades declined, her time with her friends grew shorter and shorter, all she could do was think of that day when Brett was swallowed into that purple void, and then think of all of those horrible things she said to Brett.
"You're a lazy good-for-nothing and you're never going to make anything of yourself!"
"Stop acting like an idiot, you idiot!"
"Brett, when you're still living at this house when you're 42, I will not feel sorry for you."
Now he was gone, and as her parents kept telling her (but not in the way they think), it was her fault.
When it couldn't build any more, Sara turned to research: just what the hell took Brett?
She then spent every lunch period at school in the library looking up mythological, cryptozoological, or alien creatures matching that woman's description. Over the course of several weeks and many dubious sources and books, she could piece together this: across various worldwide legends, there exists a boogeyman-like woman who is essentially part mentor, part trickster, part child eater. The most popular is the Russian Baba Yaga, but the Baba Yaga is far too old and not as high-tech as this creature.
This thing was a Japanese-style youkai known under legend as Yukari Yakumo, known to control the borders and boundaries of physical properties. According to legend, Yukari will bring children from the outside world into her realm known as the Illusionary Realm of Gensokyo. Why she does this is unknown: conflicting sources say she does this to eat the children, others say she does this to teach them a lesson, others say she does it merely to give them a better home. Of course, none of these books took any of this seriously: these legends are only for entertainment purposes.
But Sara knew these weren't just legends: Yukari wa real, and if she was real, Gensokyo was real, too. If they're both real, then Brett must be in Gensokyo, but that would also give Sara this new problem: Brett was not just in a fantasy world, but all the way in Japan.
If Brett is still alive and in a Japanese fantasy world, she thought, I can still get him back.
I don't know how I'll do it, but I will rescue Brett and prove how much I care for him, no matter what.