"Kaa-san... Don't be sleeping now..." The girl shook the seemingly dead body. "Oh, who cares?" She shoved the drawer-stored pills into Haito's mouth. "Wakey wakey! That stranger-san left a big mess behind, huh? I thought we were already covered on insane people coming here 3 days ago, but if they were really insane, they wouldn't have any sense of order, would they? My bad for inviting her in. Do you want me to kill her?" Haito woke up to a lifeless living room. Nothing but the stench of blood and a spilled Spirytus bottle. It was a steep price for her experimental session. 'In all honesty, I thought verbal conflict would be a good way to spark some doubt in that girl... But it seems it got a bit too personal there. I should learn to control myself. She must be sleeping upstairs, probably.' She took her mind off Seija, and focused on the girl.
"I wish she didn't hide from me like this..." Haito was used to her flickering in and out of home depending on if she was present. It was like taking care of a cat, in some way. "My head's pounding..." She didn't care whether Seija had killed her or not. It was for certain that Walter would keep her alive, no matter what. Blood pooled under her. Luckily, none of it got on the armchair. But her suit had been stained, unfortunately. And she feared the only other change of clothes in that home that fit her were... not of her taste. She tossed it over her shoulder and dismayed at the bottle of wasted spirits.
Looking like an office worker on break, Haito headed outside to see how long she'd spent unconscious. It was night. 'God I'd love some Earl Gray right about now.' She breathed in the rancid stench of the flesh-fed garden. It reminded her of her time back home, at sea. A sickening sight. One she'd rather not have burned into her mind. But it was still there, whether she liked it or not. And she was reaping the benefits of it. She took a ripe berry from a bush, popping it into her mouth. 'Delightful.' The fairies took Haito's presence as a sign that Aoyuu (Blue Yuu[ka]) was gone, and some of the younger ones came to the house for candy.
"Kimori-san! Are you okay?" One asked. The doctor's head was still bleeding, despite her being fine. "If I'm not screaming in pain, then I am, don't you think? Don't worry your pretty little head over this. I just had a small altercation with the floor. Headbutted it. We both got hurt." She chuckled. "You want some sweets, right?" The small group of girls talked amongst themselves for a moment. The water fairy turned around to inform the doctor. "Kimori-san, have you heard? People have seen a big bad runaway around here. Her name's Seija. We came to tell you."
"Huh. That's good to know. So, do you want strawberry?" The fairy nodded with energy. 'Adorable.' She popped open the jar. Suddenly, fear popped up on the fairies' faces. Haito turned around. Nobody there. "Did she spook you? Don't fret, you aren't made of meat, so she won't bury you in the garden. Actually, do you want some fruits from there? Can't be munching on sweets all day, can you?" Grandma... "No. We want candy!" What a bunch of brats. Still cute.
Haito pinched their ears. "She works really hard to raise that garden. Have a bit of empathy." They argued that "Someone who uses people as fertilizer doesn't have feelings!", which Haito couldn't respond to, but she still took them to the garden. She sat them at the veranda table and got- 'Oh, Walter brought them a bowl.' They were pissing scared, though. "See, she isn't bad." They nibbled the fruits reluctantly, as if they'd been held at gunpoint to do so.
"O-ooh!" They stained their hands with the juice after the first bite. It was surprisingly sweet. Even more than what they had 'stolen' from the Scarlet Devil Mansion the previous night. 'Stolen' as in being handed some apples by the gatekeeper in exchange for working as substitute maids. But nevertheless...
Haito was a hospitable person. Walter, if you gave her a chance. But, the question that was gnawing away at the fairies right now was- "Yummy..." The fairies tried wiping their faces with their hands to no avail. Haito cleaned the stains with a handkerchief. The flower fairy called her. "Hey, Kimori-san. Why don't you go out of the Forest?" Haito stroked her chin. "How to explain it to you... We're hiding away from a very powerful someone. He lives in a palace 3,000 times bigger than a daimyo's and has a million men at his command, and nobody likes him. So we don't move outside, because he has eyes everywhere but here."
The young'uns didn't understand what an 'onmyouji' was, but they caught the gist of it. But one still had doubts. "Why is 'here' so special?" The water fairy asked. "No more questions, children. Now, I'm busy with something, so I need you to go. What I just said is a very big secret, so you can't tell it to anybody. I can tell you're smart and big enough not to, right?" She handed some candy to the fairies. And left some on the table for Walter. They flew off upon getting the goods. It was easy to distract the simple-minded fairies.
Haito was heading back inside the house, when she stopped dead on her tracks. "Sakugo-chan... We're getting a guest tomorrow. She's a good friend of mine. Open the door if she knocks. I'll be again in the basement tonight. I'll make it up to you some day, I'm sorry. Sweet dreams. Don't let that girl get to you." She didn't like calling Walter a mistake, but the girl wouldn't take it any other way. It was the only thing she had left from her cynical mother.
A whistling gust of wind blew over Walter's head, blowing away her flat cap. "Good night, kaa-san. I'll be fine." She said.
"I told you not to call me that." Haito replied.
It was a cold autumn morning. It wasn't that strange for her to come around to greet her doctor. But something seemed off that day. Maybe the garden stunk a bit more than usual of impurity. Maybe She was hearing some strange noises- No, she wasn't a stranger to whatever weird experiments Haito did night-long. But she didn't think they normally came from upstairs. She paid it no mind. She knocked on the wooden door. Notebook in hand, she looked through the blank pages with her pen in the other. She heard hurrying steps from the stairs. Walter approached with messy hair and her clothes backwards. "Aunt Sagume! Welcome! " It seems she overslept. "Hey, Walter. Where's Haito-san?"
Walter was not pleased. "Urgh, I told you not to call me that~ It's Sakugo! Saku-go! I don't care what my name means, call me by it! The old woman is down by the basement. I'm going to be upstairs. Don't come." How angsty. Sagume heard the sounds of a struggle upstairs. 'Not my business.' She kicked the trapdoor open and started to count down. "Three, Two, O-"
"I'm up! Kijin-chan, you know you are a dead woman if you start speaking about my progress, right?" Sagume nodded while giggling at her servant's misfortune. "Shin, not Jin." She corrected her. "Ah, it's just a two stroke difference, who cares? Let me make you some green tea. What brought you here?" Haito climbed up the ladder. Her face was covered in ash.
"News." Not more of those...
"Another attack? Are you fine?" Haito asked. It was neither the first, nor probably the last, but she was still worried. She held a wooden board with some tea made in the basement boiler. As this was a more complex topic to talk about, Sagume had to write it out.
"It's getting really bad..." The spirit had started using life-fueled fairies in her recent raids, and she would start chipping away at their defenses soon enough. "They've been going at a steady rate, and will breach soon enough. We'll have to transfer if they do. Most possibly, move over to the Dream World. But that'll only be a temporary solution. The next step..." Haito held her breath. The ominous flipping of pages marked her worst fears coming true. "Would be here, Gensokyo. I'm trying our best to hold off the plan." Haito put the tea down and set the board off to the side while Kishin wrote. "Propaganda, fliers, arranging speeches, even; I've shown myself now more than I have in the past century... I'm trying my best. But she keeps advancing. And it won't be long until she passes through." Sips of tea masked her worry. Another page. "The Watatsuki sisters are holding her off for now, but her attacks feel like a jackhammer aiming at our sides. Constant, persistent..." And another. "And we, unlike her, don't have infinite energy. We're getting ground down like rocks."
"I... didn't expect such news. I'm screwed, aren't I? So, I'm trying to remake the Hourai Elixir, disguised as a field research trip on humanity. If you all get here, then I'm good as dead. I skipped out on many of my Ultramarine Orb Elixir doses, too. The amount they gave me... too little. And I couldn't manage to cover for Walter... Or else, the trip would be cut in half. And I'm already reaching my limits here. It's been fifteen years in here. Time has started slowing down for me, too. What a year used to feel like is now a month, what a decade was is now just one year... Impurity's getting the better of me. In some time, I'll be human if I don't up the dosage." The shocking revelation made Sagume's jaw fall. "You couldn't share with her? What will you say to the higher-ups? You couldn't keep her daughter safe and stained her with impurity? And how could it have run out so fast-" The ink stopped flowing through the page. Sagume spoke. "You were trying to reverse-engineer the Hourai Elixir from the Ultramarine Orb Elixir... You're kidding me, right?" Stupid, stubborn Haito.
There was no response other than a face that read out loud 'Guilty as charged.'. "But there's simply no other way. I've done my research, broken many laws, done taboos in the name of truly advancing our medical development... I'm grasping at straws here, but we've been depending far too much on Yagokoro-sama's powers, and now that she's stowed herself down here, I want to start my own progress and make what she hasn't. I won't live within another's shadow. The first step to that is making my own Hourai Elixir. It's Yagokoro-sama's symbol of being the peak of all chemists. Becoming human, making deals... It's all some sweat in a gold mine. And I have vowed to myself to surpass her work no matter what." Her ambition went all the way to the Heavens. Her commitment was foolish. "But you can't get back to the moon if-" Seija and Walter rolled down the stairs in a wrestle over the toy camera. "Give me that!" Walter screamed. "It's a magical artifact, not a toy, you scum-sucking rat!"
"Who is that?" Sagume asked. "Some girl Sakugo-chan found dying two days ago. She tried killing me yesterday. It's okay, though." The petty squabble stopped as Seija eyed the supposedly dead woman. "Have fun!" Haito said. Seija put Walter's arm on her shoulder and walked back upstairs with her quietly. "What were we talking about, again?" Sagume asked.
"Maybe it's better not to remember. Anyways, that girl has inspired me to get back into being a psychiatrist. I've decided she'll be my first patient down here. Also, how are you dealing with your condition? Being half-mute must be hard, eh? I'm remembering some stuff. You were such a mess on our first session, and made an equally big mess out of my office, too. But everything's fine now, right? Oh, tea's getting cold. Better drink it before it goes the full way through." Sagume drank the still warm tea with one hand. "How much longer will you be here for, Haito?" She wrote with the other. "If I can get one maru of Elixir (30 kg), then a decade more wouldn't be impossible. I just need to try and replicate Houraisan-sama's powers. I've got the soul-body tie severing part easy, but making it so the body can be restored infinitely, that's a miracle I want to do on my own, even if Yagokoro-sama couldn't. Everything can be done using traditional magic, even Tsukuyomi-sama's own strength, I tell you: there is an infinite amount of potential hidden within this human's creation. But, as of now, the amount of Elixir that I have will only last for little less than a year, if I keep dosage right. But if I had the time to make more of it, then given some time, I could probably make enough to last me another. And if you manage to purify Gensokyo in that time..." She shook her head. "There's a big chance I could surpass Eirin even before that. I just need a chance, Kishin-chan. All I want is to get a chance to compete against these literal dei ex machina. I'm just a servant, Kishin-chan, but I serve you only because I'm able to trust you. So please. I want to look as deep as I can while I'm still doing research here. Another year will be fine. I need to make my big announcement to the moon. There is no way I'm not going to try and reach for the sun when it's so close."
Suddenly, her eyes met with Seija's, who'd just fallen from the ceiling on to the table. Walter looked down from the hole in the floor. They were eavesdropping. "Ya tellin' me not to chase the sun, when you're doing the exact same thing as I am? Huh, Hypocrite-san." She wasn't going to sit down and listen when the therapist was being just as unrealistic as her. "So you're from the moon. I dunno, you look so... human. Couldn't have guessed." She spun the teacup in place by reversing it repeatedly. "But really, if you're lookin' for someone to beat up the strong with you, why didn't you ask me? Yer givin' me shelter, I hear you're up for some rebellion, so why don't you ask an Amanojaku? I like flipping stuff upside down." Seija tried to convince Haito to let her join her conquest of the moon. "This is not a physical fight, Seija-san. Wait, Amanojaku?" She turned her head towards Sagume. "Kishin-chan, you should probably explain yourself. Is this your child? Amanosaku, was it?" Sagume, despite, denied it with all her strength. "No, Amanosaku is part of the Defense Corps. And he's my son, not my daughter. And definitely, he's not a bastard." This left them with an enigma in their hands. "So, how could there be Amanojaku other than you?" Sagume concluded on a logical extreme. "If what's expected is that me and my son are the only Amanojaku, then, won't, by nature of our race, mean that there is another? Think about it." It was the only explanation. Haito changed topics.
"And while you are in the right, Seija-san, I am a hypocrite, but I am trying to lead you to a better path than mine. You're rebelling because of your impulses as an Amanojaku. I'm doing it because I have chosen a bad path by myself, and I'm stubborn enough to carry on with it. We are alike, yet we are not. Go back up. Sakugo-chan needs to meet someone that isn't us. Expand her horizons." Seija dropped the tea on Haito. "Hey, get a grip. I'm not a kid. You're thinkin' that I can't be smart and do a job well done, are you? Well... you couldn't be more right. But hell if I haven't got spunk. Anyways, if you're a rebel, I'm just helpin' a fella. And if ya think I'm not up to the task, then I'll turn this entire house upside down." Haito stood quiet for a second, pensative. "Are you sure she's not some forgotten child of yours?" Sagume put her face on her palms and wheezed. "No. Shut up..."
"Seija-chan, come back here!" Dear hell. A heavy, fist-sized ying-yang orb was tossed on Seija's gut. "I'm going to KILL YOU!" She vanished with a flash, holding the ball.
"But this is a serious matter. I'm really close. I've been in a bit of a slow grind, but I'm getting closer to making it, I'm getting progress." There was no stopping her. "Alright, if you insist... This is just returning a favor. You can do whatever when you're done. Take one kan (3.75kg) of the Orb Elixir. You have two years. This is as a friend, not your master." Sagume had a bag prepared for the inevitable situation. She got up. "Well, that's everything. Hopefully, I won't be seeing you all too soon. Peace." She excused herself and walked out through the doorhole in the entrance, but turned around upon being outside. "Ah, one thing. They aren't going to be too mad when you tell them that Sakugo's become human. I bet they'll be quite pleased. But don't count on getting out scot-free." Haito sighed and headed upstairs, kicking the door in to an unbelievably messy room.