In a fugue, Marisa stumbled toward the door. Her hands fumbled with the lock, and she only barely managed to push it open before she slumped to the floor.
The red-and-white blossom was slowly fading from the sky. It was the start of the show in earnest, and three more trails of fire shot up before bursting into a shower of glimmering stars, which each exploded into multicolored sparks so fine that they looked like rainbows radiating through the sky. The light illuminated half of Gensokyo's countryside, showing off the entire landscape in the first flash before slowly fading.
No matter what else, Marisa was at least providing a pretty good show for everybody. She doubted there was a spot in Gensokyo where the display wasn't visible. Wherever Reimu was, she had to be seeing this too.
It was the one heartening thought that she had as she watched the fireworks fire off one by one, blasting Gensokyo with pyrotechnic displays that she'd spent her last week on earth putting together. So much for her grand gesture. With each progressive explosion, she felt a little emptier inside, until only two questions were left:
Why had Reimu left? It didn't make sense. She'd been sure that Reimu had felt the same way. Was she wrong? Had Reimu changed her mind? She didn't even know what explanation hurt most. It didn't make sense.
And... what now? What did it even mean for her if she'd been wrong, or Reimu had changed her mind? It hurt to even leave her side right now. Was she just going to cling to Reimu pathetically for the rest of her existence? Could she still go through with it and hope for some kind of resolution? Maybe she'd just end up like one of those eternally lost ghosts that popped up in stories a lot, shambling out of the forest on moonless nights to demand travelers to lead her to Reimu or something. Yeah, great. Why not.
With a series of rapid-fire explosions that left the air over the village cloaked in drifting clouds of smoke, Nitori shot off the grand finale. The explosions reverberated across Gensokyo's many mountainsides and valleys for several seconds... and that was it.
The show was over, and with it, the only thing motivating Marisa to pay even the least bit of attention to the outside world. She slumped down onto her side, and it took all of her presence of mind to scoot back through the shrine's door before she gave up entirely. She just felt dead, and not in the literal way. Still couldn't even cry, so she just had to lay here feeling broken until she worked up the resolve to go somewhere else.
With such a mental state, Marisa wasn't even sure how many hours she'd been laying there when somebody settled onto the shrine's front step. Her gaze drifted up, operating on pure reflex, and it took a moment for what she was seeing to really register. Reimu was standing in front of her.
Reimu was standing in front of her and, it slowly dawned on her, looked as lost and surprised as Marisa felt. As her consciousness struggled to piece itself back together, the other details of the scene slowly dawned on her. Reimu's eyes were red and raw, and her hair was held into a pair of dango buns by two slim silver pins. They would have looked elegant and cute if they hadn't gotten a little disheveled and loose at some point.
"You're... still here," Reimu said softly, after the two had sat in silence for easily ten seconds.
"Y-yeah..." As Marisa drifted back to awareness, she realized that she probably looked pretty pathetic laying on the floor and pushed herself up to sitting. Reflexively, she wiped at her eyes. It was an excuse to avoid meeting Reimu's gaze while she collected her thoughts, rather than any need to dry tears. "Did you see the fireworks?"
"I saw them..." Reimu's voice tapered off uncertainly. "I thought you were—that you had something to do?"
Marisa hesitated. She still had no idea where Reimu had been or why she'd left in the first place. There was no telling how she'd react if she spoke her mind. But...
But screw it. If Reimu was disgusted and spat in her face, it would at least be something. She could deal with that. Better than spending the rest of eternity wondering. "W-well," Marisa mumbled, before pushing herself up and rising slowly to her feet. "That's what I'm here for."
The color drained from Reimu's face, and her entire body went rigid. "You still haven't...?"
"Yeah... sorry. It's not over yet." Seeing Reimu look like she was about to collapse to the floor, Marisa took a quick step forward, steadying her with one hand and sliding the other arm behind her for a reassuring squeeze. She needed to just say her piece now before she lost all resolve, but it was getting harder by the second. She opened her mouth to do it... and froze. Once she said it, there was no going back. For all she knew, she'd vanish then and there.
It was a sickening feeling... but one that she'd had days to mull over. Here and now, with Reimu in her arms, she felt just brave enough to push past it. "H-hey, Reimu. The thing is, uh. The reason I-I'm here, I mean." She'd been tensing up, bracing for the moment when she vanished, and now made herself focus very consciously on relaxing. "Reimu, I kinda, u-um... I kinda love you, okay?"
"That's... what I was afraid of."
Reimu's voice was quivering by the end of the sentence, and the last of the force drained from her muscles. Marisa guided her to the floor as gently as she could, half-dazed herself. She'd said it. It was over. She'd barely thought about what came next ever since her death... and when she did, it was vague, uncertain promises of her and Reimu kissing under the fireworks. Laying on the floor of the shrine, with an uncertain response and Reimu starting to sniffle against her shoulder, was all a bit more... messy than her projections.
"What do you mean?" Marisa said, uneasily raising a hand to wrap behind Reimu.
"Y-your..." Reimu's voice cracked, and she took a moment to steady herself. At least she didn't seem to be outright sobbing. Maybe she'd gotten it all out earlier. "That's why you were here, r-right? Because of me?"
"Oh. Yeah..." So Reimu had already figured it out. Then that meant... if Marisa had still had a heart, she was sure it would be shattering right now. She reflexively cleared her throat to keep her voice steady before saying, "You were avoiding me."
Reimu nodded glumly, her face still pressed in against Marisa's shoulder. "I couldn't... I didn't want to think about you disappearing. I know I wasn't going to be able to avoid you forever, but I'd just thought that maybe... a few more hours might help or something. I don't know." Reimu gave a last loud sniff, pushed herself back, and started wiping her eyes self-consciously. "And then you did it anyway..."
Marisa had been ready to collapse into despair again, but now froze. Fumblingly, she pulled back from Reimu, giving the shrine maiden room to breathe while she gathered her own thoughts. "S-so, um, does that mean that...?"
"That I like you? Yeah." Reimu seemed to have stopped crying for the moment, but kept staring down at the floor. "I couldn't say anything before, and then you died and I didn't want to make things worse... jeez, I'm pathetic."
"I think we're both kinda bad at this," Marisa said, and even managed a weak laugh afterward. The tension was slowly draining out of her now, replaced by the first tentative hope that she'd felt all evening. She glanced down at herself and, thankfully not finding that she was dramatically fading from view or anything, said, "S-so, uh, I don't actually know what happens now. I feel..." She felt... much better, actually. That unnatural craving that she'd felt for Reimu earlier had subsided, replaced by much more controllable desires. She wanted to be with Reimu, and spend an entire evening on her step drinking tea and talking to her about fights they'd had five years ago, and tease her over the goofy-looking blush she got whenever she was upset... She was still in love with Reimu, but it was no longer the defining feature of her existence. "I kinda feel like that's what I was here for, but it looks like I'm still here, huh?"
"Maybe we were worried about nothing."
"Yeah..." Marisa wasn't really convinced, but in her increasingly giddy mood, she wasn't about to let it slow her down. She reached over and, for the second time this week, grabbed Reimu's hand. "Wanna see how long it lasts?"
At some point during the night, the pair had decided to move up onto the roof of the shrine. They'd come up here regularly when they were younger, spending long nights whispering secrets to each other. Once they'd gotten old enough that the shrine's roof occasionally creaked in protest at the weight, they'd thought twice about the practice... but tonight was a special occasion. Reimu had even hauled a pot of tea and two cups up, giving them something to keep them warm as the night cooled down.
Drinking while laying on the sloped roof was a bit difficult, and it was being made more so by the way that Reimu would barely let go of Marisa's hand for a second. Somehow, they were making it work anyway.
"So what'd you think of the fireworks, anyway?" Marisa said, as she carefully settled her cup onto a section of the roof just lightly-sloped enough that it wouldn't slide off.
"They were pretty. I was crying too hard to see a lot of them, but the ones I did see..." Reimu trailed off, blushing, then tensed up and looked back to Marisa. "And was the big red-and-white one supposed to mean something?!"
"Hehe. That was the third version of that one, even. The first one just said 'I LOVE REIMU HAKUREI' in, like, ten-meter characters."
"You're making that up."
"Hey, the second one said, 'REIMU'S GOT A CUTE BUTT,' but I thought that was probably a bit personal. … that one survived the fire, you can have it if ya want it."
"Cute butt...? H-hey!" With the way that Reimu jerked, Marisa was half-afraid that she was going to jump up and drag her to her feet. "If a rocket like that exists, I'll just have to destroy it."
"Hehe. Yeah, but it's true, though." Marisa left it at that, already feeling quite embarrassed enough for one night. This flirting stuff was easy when she was just doing it to throw people off-balance, but it somehow felt more awkward when she actually meant it. She carefully rolled away from her drink and over to face Reimu again. The moon was almost completely dark tonight, and on top of the shrine, there weren't exactly a lot of light sources. The only light on Reimu's face was the soft glow from Marisa's slowly-drifting phantoms overhead, casting hazy shadows around the pair. "H-hey, Reimu...?" She gave the girl's hand a squeeze and scooted a little closer.
"Huh?"
"I, uh." Before Marisa could finish her thought, her leg brushed against something. She didn't even get a chance to see it before it went careening down the rooftop, then crashed against the ground below with the unmistakable sound of shattering glass.
"... that was my only teapot," Reimu said with a sigh, sitting up just a little to inspect the damage over the roof's edge. She seemed to recover quickly, though, and smiled to Marisa as she settled back down. "You were saying?"
"Oh. Um." Marisa's thoughts had been pretty effectively derailed by the accident, and it took a moment to drag them back on track. "Thanks for... bein' okay with the whole ghost thing and whatever. Maybe if I'd said something while I was alive, I'd still be... y'know. Alive."
"We both messed up," Reimu said, and scooted in to close the last gap between them. Whatever she'd planned to say next was lost as she blinked in mild surprise. "Oh. You're warm."
"Yep!" Marisa said, and rolled onto her back to make the position a bit more comfortable, tugging Reimu along and up against her side. "That's the benefit of datin' a ghost, you know. Warm human bits to hold in the winter, cold phantom bits for the summer. Not to brag, but I'd make a pretty versatile girlfriend like that."
"Girlfriend, hmm?"
"Uh-huh."
"I like the sound of that..." Reimu said with a yawn, leaning in to rest her head against Marisa's shoulder.
Marisa smiled at that, taking a moment to relax and enjoy the warmth, herself. "Sleepy?"
"Mmh. A little," Reimu admitted. "But I don't really want to fall asleep yet..."
"Well, I'm not goin' anywhere if I can help it," Marisa said, and carefully rearranged her position to grab Reimu's hand again. "I've hung around this long. Maybe it'll last. You'll be like seventy years old and wrinkly, an' I'll still look like this."
"That's not fair. If I'm an old lady, you have to be an old lady ghost."
"Not how it works. Sorry, I don't make the rules."
"Like you've ever let rules stop you," Reimu said. She stifled another yawn and squirmed a bit to get more comfortable. The ensuing silence lasted long enough that Marisa was starting to worry that Reimu had fallen asleep, until she murmured, "Do you remember when we were little, and you'd bring me out here and talk about stars for half the night?"
"Huh? Yeah, I guess so."
"Tell me about some stars. Your voice will keep me awake until you're gone."
"I said I wasn't going anywhere," Marisa said weakly, but couldn't protest much further. She could feel it too. There was no way this could last. She tilted her head back against the slope of the rooftop, and her eyes sought out familiar constellations to orient herself. "But fine, I guess. So, um. Okay. There're these ones here, kinda in a zig-zag," she said, pointing them out with her free hand even though Reimu's eyes were closed. "That constellation's called Serpens. It's pretty important for if you're doin' healing rituals. I don't really know much about that stuff, but Patchouli can patch you up pretty good when it's in the sky."
"Mmhm."
"There's actually this other constellation that's a guy wrestlin' it. Some kinda old outside world myth. I think that's where it came from, he used to rip snakes up and heal people with them or something. Anyway, there are two meteor showers that come from there in the winter, so I like to keep track of that one to..."
Reimu hadn't even known that she was falling asleep until she was jolted awake by her head dully thudding against the shrine's roof. She pushed herself up to sitting, rubbing the side of her face sorely and blinking against the first light of dawn.
The breeze picked up a little, and Reimu raised a hand to shield her eyes. And then, she noticed it: Barely a meter away, snagged on the shrine's ill-maintained roof, a red ribbon was fluttering in the wind.