A/N: I started to read a few popular stories (most notably, Do Androids dream of electric sheep?) in order to try taking a few notes from good works, but I realized they were in my native language, and not English, so it's most likely a futile effort. Still enjoyed them, though. Deckard's cool.
I own nothing, use my characters if you want to, Touhou Project is owned by ZUN and Team Shanghai Alice. See you when summer break comes around.
PS: I have a few alts to chapter 2 in my computer, which have a quite different direction in terms of the OC's story. Please tell me if you're interested. I'll think on the fly about which one I'll commit to, though.
"Sorry for calling you Kijin, stranger-san, I confused you with someone else I knew." The thin and small blanket barely covered her, the straps of her underwear peeking from over her shoulder. "I'm half-naked right now, and I need to get some clothes on me, or else my face is going to be hot enough to boil tea on, so please." She gestured the intruding youkai away.
Seija left without a single voice of protest. Respect even your enemies' privacy, yo. As wicked and evil she was, there was still a pinch of decency in her. She played around with her hair, when the sudden thought came there was no point to playing clean and that she could catch the girl with her literal pants down. There was no shame in it, as Seija was already an outlaw. She couldn't go further down the moral axis.
"Alright, I'm ready. Do you want a glass of tea, my fine lady?" The prankster snuck up on Seija, whispering quietly into her ear. The victim of the unprovoked jest sprang back like a grasshopper running away from a predator. The haunted feel of the house didn't help in settling any nerves she had. There remained a lot of stress from all the running away and smacking faces that had taken place during the time Seija still hadn't found any safe places. Leaving Shinmyoumaru behind was one of the lowest points she had reached in that wild chase, and she was still dealing with it. These factors added up to a blob of anxiety which had almost reached its limit.
"Geez, you look like you're in a pretty bad mood. Feeling under the weather?" She quickly blurted out. The miniature Jizo statue was clenched on tightly, and Seija's free hand pointed towards the young human. Of course, it was no way to react to innocent teasing, but being on edge was expected.
"I supposed as much... Okay, calm down and take a moment to breathe. Being super paranoid about everything and everyone around you isn't gonna help in the long run, if you're even listening to me right now." Now that she was clothed and fully awake, her anti-nutjob sense was in full function. Seija's breath shallowed and her eyes twitched with instability.
'This month's batch isn't finished yet... Do I reckon I can make it in a few minutes?' She had only done the powdering, so there still remained the measuring and mixing. 'That's a hard no.' It would have taken a couple hours to actually figure out the right proportions for the poison. Eyeballing everything and weighing it in her hands was her go-to option, even if it had screwed her over more than once. There still were marks on the kitchen walls which would never leave. 'Damned magishrooms. Oh right, murder-hobo.'
Seija keeled over on all fours. "You aren't looking too bright there, buddy." The spores had seeped into her system. These symptoms indicated she was in the second stage of infection. What a good time for an epiphany. 'Oh, now I get it; all the crazy people that come in here are crazy because of the spores!' Seija's wheezing got a whole lot louder. 'How did I not realize before? Stupid idiot!' She was then swept off her feet to a deathly Seija, who was on the verge of meeting Komachi. "Hey, a-hole, you gotta have medicine here, right? Gimme some or else I'm bringin' you down with me." Seija desperately grabbed a cartoonily-sized bomb and held on to the girl's shirt.
She was immediately force-fed a white powder from a small sack with hurry. "*cough* *hack* Friggin' hell! What are you doin'?!" She stared unbelievingly at a worry-stricken face that held a tinge of confusion. Last time Seija saw that kind of expression towards her was from the little Inchling herself, and what washed over her could only be described with the word 'hurt'. "I'm so sorry, Kijin-sama, I- um... Are you alright?" Seija's vision was hazy and unclear.
Seija let go and fell over on her back. "I-I'm not sure..." Thoughts of Shinmyoumaru fogged up her head, and tears formed in her eyes. "Hey, you seem to have had a long day. Me too, but that's beside the point. You must need some rest. Are you willing to spend the night in my house?" Seija nodded, aware of how vulnerable she looked.
They entered the nearly-empty bedroom. "It's not much, but you probably need this more than me. I hope you sleep well." The single-sized mattress had many scratches and scars, but they were all patched up with careful work. It was not great, but it gave Seija enough comfort for a small bit of rest. Her host, who had risen in height somehow, left and closed the door behind her.
She sighed. 'I wonder when I'll be able to get in the lead... I lost my mind for a few days and came to my senses just a few minutes ago. I have to double the dose again...' Haito thought to herself, rifling through the basement chemical supplies. 'The salt will only last for so long, and it's getting harder and harder to stay like this.' She needed to develop further her research on the drug, or else she would essentially kick the bucket in a couple months. 'Now, Walter-san. What will you do when it all ends?' Ideas of what horrible things that despicable beast would carry out when she disappeared broke her down. "*If only I had taken more of the Elixir with me...*" She wistfully muttered.
The damp wooden planks creaked with Haito's step. If she managed to figure out what the Elixir was made of or procured even the smallest bit of it, she could make salt to be able to hold "it" back for decades. Or at least, enough to live out what her lifespan should've lasted. She plucked a book out of the laboratory shelf.
'A Guide on Impurity, Death and Eternity by Ya-hakase.'
Whereas many other works on her shelf were dusty yet practically untouched, this one was very well taken care of. A few tears had formed on the pages of the thick tome. The tiny, bold lettering contained complex words which she gave her own meaning to while skimming through. Haito set the book down on the table and started observing intensely the hundreds of pages that she had been memorizing one by one over the last couple of months.
'She never released the recipe to the public, so I have to do with what I can.' It was a sea of knowledge to delve in; that's what Ya's work Haito considered to be. The distilling water dripped in the silence of the dead of night interrupted momentarily by none other than the sound of crickets and paper rustling against paper. Only a torch hanging from the wall lit the table, the cloth burning slowly. There was an abundance of firewood in her home, hopefully for years to come. The crackle of fire joined the harmony of insignificant noise.
"Kaguya-hime's control over eternity... There must be a way to replicate this. There is simply no way that this search can end like this." Haito dug into every singular kanji and kana's meaning and tried reading in every which way she could to no effect. She got up to check on the distilling water with a sigh. It had been boiling for quite a long time, and was probably all ready. The only residents in the pot were a white mold-like dust and a cup of clean water above it, the latter of which was placed aside.
"Forget not to clean and cherish your tools, for they protect both the healer and the healed." She made up old-sounding phrases to pass the time while scooping up the mushroom vaccine and finally poured it into a small yellow sack, which she then placed next to the table.
'Breaktime, then. Let's cool down.' The guide was left open and placed on a nearby lecturn. The planks creaked once again, and she picked out a most notably shorter read from the shelf, whose cover depicted a tall, healthy and gleeful elder standing back-to-back with a sinister, hunchbacked young man, whose face was obscured to hide its dreadful appearance. 'By now, it will have been... the five-hundred-and-sixty-third time I have read this entire novella in one sitting.' Despite how repetitive it might sound, Haito always liked to watch the story play out from a different perspective, with varying degrees of detail.
One day, she would read from the perspective of the murderous alter ego, and another, she'd imagine the point of view of a common policeman carrying out the investigation work of the man's crimes. This insight into a fictional world had derived from an excess of free time she found herself swimming in without much of a course to follow, and the many books she'd managed to find within the household. Half were in English, the remaining majority in Japanese and a few had been written in Mandarin; in order of least to most familiarity with the language, also.
In summary, she was quite well versed in literature. Now, it was three-quarters through reading the text when the sun started shining through the basement trap-door. 'Not today, huh?' She climbed the ladder to get back into her daily life, when a familiar face met hers. Haito greeted in the most obvious way that came to her. "Good morning. I hope you slept well, Kijin-sama." Her drowsy guest seemed to have had a most comfortable sleep, which made her quite happy. Seija had helped herself to the striped pajamas in the closet, and wore them to the living room, where she had sat on one of the multiple armchairs next to the lit fireplace.
"Hey, who're you?" she replied with a cock of the head.