There is an irony to my sentiment, and I can't understand where it comes from.
"Blood is thicker than water" is a phrase that's been tossed around for the centuries since I've come to existence alongside my sister. When I first heard those words, the duchess who had said them just smiled at me over the rim of her glass of wine and explained that the bond between a family is stronger than anything else.
To this day, I still can't quite perceive what she meant by those words.
Religions from all over the world—everwhere I travel, it seems—preach that family is important. There is nothing you should value more than your own flesh and blood. Everything connects back to family. It is important to show how much you love your own parents. But the truth is I've felt closer to all of my fellow residents in my own home than I have with my own mother or father.
Yes, I can remember weeping when I saw the stake protruding out of my mother's chest, or when I saw our father's mangled body crumble to dust in the bronzy light of the sun. Flandre was crying too, but for different reasons. I wasn't crying like "something important had just been ripped out" like Flandre said. It was because of the great after—when the vampire hunters who had driven a stake through my mother's heart would be after us.
Before that, all I remember feeling with my parents is just hollow. Something as cold and empty as the porcelain animals I used to collect. Nothing like hatred. They weren't cruel to us. There was just a lack of something.
And it's strange how the very people who aren't related to me at all are the ones I have too many thank-yous to give. In particular, Sakuya.
She's more like a mother than my real mother ever was. She's a little distant herself, but she will always greet me with a reserved smile as she sets my meals out for me to eat and goes about the housework and tends to the garden. If I want to step outside for but a moment to let the others in Gensokyo know that I won't cause harm but I am still present, she will immediately accompany me with a parasol to shield me from the sun's deadly rays.
When I was decades younger she would play dolls with me. I'm too old for toys now, though, but I can conjure up those past times with a smile. It would always be some sort of adventure where the vampire saves the princess from the bratty prince and she eventually becomes his bride, or where a vampire sets out to conquer the curse of the sun and succeeds.
Since then my goals have become a little less realistic, but that bond with Sakuya won't diminish.
It's something that's beyond "master-and-servant" but just isn't enough to simply call friendship.
Sakuya… I can't bring myself to call her a mother, but the way she cares for me and has remained by my side—defying even the normal limits of that mortality her kind possesses—makes it feel more real than any other familial love I've ever had.
No thank-yous I give are ever enough.
No gestures of hugs will ever be enough.
She has given up so much for me and continues to give up even more for my sake that there isn't enough I can do to thank her.
But in the end, that is all I can say.
Sakuya Izayoi, maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, thank you for everything you have done. Maybe blood is thicker than water, but water can wash away what remains of the blood.
a/n: sorry for the lack of activity, my main focus is schoolwork and long-term original writing for the moment. but i still felt a strong desire to write this and capture my views of the strictly platonic/familial bond of sakuya and remilia. i tried to write in a style slightly pretentious—almost flowery—to capture remilia's character… as i will be doing for the other final bosses in this collection of drabbles to explore their familial/platonic relationships based on famous idioms/works of literature.
thank you for taking your time to read this. feedback is very much appreciated.