By the time that Reimu made it back to the shrine, the sun was well below the horizon. She was surprised to find that it looked like it hadn't been disturbed in her absence. The only hint that anybody else had entered were her yin-yang orbs and the purification rod, sitting in a neat line on top of the table.
It was a relieving sight. She hadn't thought to ask Yukari for them, but she wouldn't feel right without them. Her clothes were nowhere to be seen. They'd been ruined anyway. Probably burnt into a pile of ashes somewhere. She'd worry about changing later. After the day she'd had, she wasn't in the mood to do much except have a cup of tea and collapse somewhere comfortable.
The table needed to be clean if she was going to have tea, though. She put the gohei in its usual spot leaning by the door, then knelt down to pick up the yin-yang orbs. The second that her skin brushed against one, there was an audible snap of discharging energy. Pain shot into her hand. By the time that she was conscious of what had happened, she'd already recoiled from the table.
Reimu swore under her breath, shaking the still-stinging hand, then turned it over to inspect the damage. In the spot where she'd touched the orb, there was a red mark on her skin, a curling starburst of still-tender flesh. Confusion welled in her chest, then panic. If even the orbs had turned against her...
But she had to be sure. Hesitantly, she reached out and held her hand above a different orb. Gritting her teeth, she darted one finger down to give it a tap. This time, she was watching, and saw the white flash of energy that lashed out from it once she was close. Pain sparked through her finger, and it jerked away reflexively. Sucking on it, she considered the implications. It did make sense, in a certain way. She was no longer the rightful Hakurei shrine maiden.
This was a youkai-hunting shrine, and she was now a youkai.
"Yo~. Alice sends her good wishes and stuff," Marisa said, as she stepped into the shrine.
After a long and restless night—she'd never maintained a steady sleep schedule, and spending days unconscious certainly hadn't helped—Reimu had been woken up by a knock on the door. She'd barely managed to get it open before she was tackled into a hug by an already-crying Sanae. Fortunately, nobody else was waiting behind her. That was good. Word that she was home was bound to get out sooner or later, but for now, Reimu wasn't in the mood to entertain a dozen guests. "How did you know I was back already...?" she said, as she disentangled herself from Sanae just enough to push the door closed.
"Eh, call it a hunch," Marisa said, and sprawled in front of the table. "... and Yukari stopped by my place and told me. That helped, too."
"Huh." So Yukari had to meddle even with this. Great.
"S-sorry," Sanae said. Sniffling, she pulled away from Reimu and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. "I was just... by the time I got to you, you were unconscious, and they were operating. I-I was afraid I wouldn't even get to say goodbye..."
"Yeah, things looked pretty bad for a while there..." Marisa agreed.
"Oh. Sorry." What did you even say to that? "It's nice to see you, though." Reimu gave Sanae a gentle pat on the back.
"Yeah. I'm glad you're okay." Sanae squeezed into the half-hug, then leaned back with a sigh. "Oh, um! But did you hear that I'm the one that exterminated the youkai?"
"Yukari told me, yeah. Thanks, I guess."
"Hehe~. That thing was pretty speedy, but I got it in one good hit. Not bad, huh? … um. Anyway. So you're okay now?"
"More or less..." Reimu said, and glanced toward the kitchen. "... let me put some tea on, it's kind of a long story."
Reimu told them everything that she could remember, from the night in the woods to the events of the previous day. By the time she finished, their tea had grown cold.
Marisa was left staring at her in blank disbelief. "A youkai, huh."
"Yeah... I already am one, kind of. Apparently."
"Huh..."
"Um," Sanae said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. Reimu wasn't sure how she was taking this news. She'd spent the whole story nodding along with interest, but was now staring at the ceiling with a look of idle consideration. "Turning into a youkai... isn't allowed, right? If a human tries it, aren't we supposed to ex—"
"Nobody's exterminating Reimu," Marisa said. It was a simple statement of fact. She held Sanae's gaze until it was clear that the other girl had dropped the topic, then turned back to Reimu. "... still, it's weird to think that you're a youkai now. Pretty ironic."
"I guess."
"What kind of youkai?" Sanae said. "There are a lot of different ones, right?"
"I don't actually know." Reimu hadn't considered that. The range of youkai was pretty large, and she wasn't even sure what she was now. It was a discomforting realization. "A... general kind of youkai, maybe? Like Ichirin. Or part whatever-Yukari-is."
"Huh..." Sanae looked over her with renewed interest. "So you don't even know if you have any powers or anything?"
"Not really..." Reimu lifted one hand and looked at it thoughtfully. For all she knew, she already had half of Yukari's powers or something. … but probably not. That would be a bit too convenient "Anyway, I can't be the shrine maiden like this. I have to find something else to do, but..."
"The thought of you getting a job like a normal person is pretty weird," Marisa admitted. Rubbing the side of her neck, she leaned back and looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Can't you just be a youkai exterminator?"
Reimu shrugged. "No powers."
"Eesh. That's rough. It'd probably take years for me to teach you magic or something."
"And our shrine doesn't really need another miko," Sanae said with a sigh. "What other kind of skills do you have? Everybody in the village probably knows you, so it ought to be easy to get another job once you know what you're good at, right?"
"Well, um. Not... a lot." It was true, she had to admit. She was a decent cook and could patch up clothes, but not well enough to make a living out of it. She could fish a little. That was about it.
"Hmm. You could be a shopkeeper or something," Marisa said. "A lot of 'em might appreciate having somebody who knows how to deal with youkai around."
"I guess..."
"Ehe. Of course, if you got a job somewhere like that, I wouldn't be able to drop by and talk in the middle of the day or anything."
"Yeah..." Reimu's heart sank at the idea. Moving into the village would come with complications like that. Suika, Aya, the fairies, Remilia... there were a lot of people who hung around the shrine that weren't exactly welcomed with open arms in the village.
The same thoughts seemed to be running through Marisa's head. "If you got a job with Kourin, at least you could still see people..."
"Or at the mansion!" Sanae said. "They need a lot of maids and stuff there, right?"
Reimu nodded, but only because she didn't have the heart to openly shoot down the ideas. Working for Remilia seemed like... well. She didn't have Sakuya's infinite patience. It probably wasn't a good idea. And she had a sneaking suspicion that Rinnosuke barely broke even most weeks, so he probably didn't need an assistant. "Or... I might take Yukari's offer. I'm still thinking about it. She did kind of save my life."
"I've probably saved your life at least once, and I don't see me gettin' any youkai servants out of it," Marisa said, half-jokingly. "You've got to do what's best for you, and let Yukari worry about herself. I'll tell you what—give me a few days to ask around town and see what I can drum up, okay? There's got to be something out there for the biggest badass in Gensokyo."
Reimu had to hand it to Marisa—her secondhand job search really was tenacious and thorough. By the end of the day, she was already turning up leads, but... the results weren't promising. Cleaning fish by the river. Serving drinks in a bar. At best, Reimu might help an elderly couple on their rice farm, with a chance to inherit it after they passed away. She wanted to give them all fair consideration. Try as she might, though, she couldn't feel anything but dreary resignation when she pictured herself doing any of them for the rest of her life.
After spending a lifetime fighting and socializing with youkai, she'd never felt at home in the human village. Even as a child, she hadn't really been a part of it. Now, the villagers who weren't afraid of her because of her shrine's reputation just saw her as a weapon. Their concerns weren't her concerns. And as much as she hated to admit it, the thought of moving back there, surrounding herself with humans who saw every youkai as a threat, never waking up to find that Suika had crashed on her floor at 2 AM or that fairies were playing tag in her front yard... it kind of hurt. It seemed really boring.
She'd never thought of youkai extermination as something that she enjoyed, but she had to admit that she would miss it. Without the orbs, she wasn't much good in a fight. As things were, she'd never quite be Marisa's equal again. Or Sanae, or Youmu, or... nearly anybody that she knew, really. If she turned down Yukari, she might never have another spell card duel.
The thought shouldn't have hurt, but it did.
There were other complications too. Even now, she kept finding her thoughts drifting back to Yukari's one question, recorded in perfect clarity in her not-quite-human mind. Why do you think that I was willing to take you as a shikigami? Even if she wanted to, it would be a bit hard to convince herself that this was all part of some scheme. The memory of Yukari, looking terrified and vulnerable as she'd bent down over Reimu's rapidly-bleeding body, made that difficult. It was obvious that Yukari had been driven by urgency and emotion, so... what? If there was supposed to be some deeper meaning, it was eluding her.
Reimu wasn't sure when she made up her mind. It wasn't a hard and logical decision. She'd never worked like that. It was a slow, dawning realization, spread over days of an increasingly joyless job search. She simply woke up one day and started putting the shrine in order. One last cleaning to get the place tidy for its next inhabitant, and then she started packing her belongings.
There weren't many of them. Most of the shrine's contents belonged to the shrine itself. The furniture stayed. There was no point in bringing food or cooking utensils. Her clothes were mostly shrine maiden outfits, which she... wasn't going to be needing anymore. Once everything like that was sorted out, her worldly possessions amounted to a few dozen articles of clothing, a handful of souvenirs and knickknacks from Kourindou, and a small pile of books. Altogether, everything that Reimu owned, every physical record of her twenty-three years of life, fit into a single large sack. She would only need a single trip.
Once her belongings were packed up, there was only one thing left to do. With the inclusion of a few coins that she found while cleaning, her life savings totaled 3285 yen. She could pretty easily hold it all in her cupped hands, but they heaped just high enough that she still had to focus on her balance as she carried them out the front door.
Reimu circled around the donation box and approached it from the front, then dumped the double-handful of coins inside. All of her money had come from youkai-hunting or the shrine. It only felt appropriate to give it back before she left.
Besides, she felt like she owed the kami. Whoever was enshrined here, they'd been her silent partner for a decade. Even if she'd been frustrated at their silence sometimes, leaving without at least saying goodbye felt too cold. As she bowed and clapped in front of the donation box, she almost convinced herself that the god might speak up with a parting message. It remained characteristically silent. Maybe it would be more talkative with the next shrine maiden, whoever they were. She could only hope.
After several minutes spent in prayer, Reimu stepped away from the donation box and made a final tour of the shrine's grounds. Throughout it, a realization just kept building in her mind: the next time she came here, it would be somebody else's home. The shrine wasn't large, but she still managed to spend the better part of hour wandering it, getting one last look at everything. When she walked back into the living area, there were tears in her eyes. Her vision blurred as she got out her writing supplies.
The brush was comfortable in her hand; she'd spent days of her life with it, writing piles of ofuda by muscle memory. Today, she only had one last message to write:
THE HAKUREI SHRINE IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED.
The ink was still drying when she posted the sign on the front door. It probably wouldn't deter curious youkai, but she felt like she owed any human visitors at least some explanation.
With that, there was nothing left to keep her. Reimu gave the shrine one last lingering look, then threw the sack of her belongings over her shoulder, leapt into the air, and took off for the closest point on the barrier.
In her unplanned rush to vacate the shrine, Reimu had forgotten one thing: Yukari slept during the day. She ended up knocking on the door for five minutes before she accepted that nobody was home and awake. Instead of the dramatic arrival that she'd pictured, she spent the rest of the day sitting on the front step until Ran came home, hours later. Not until the sun was going down and Ran had started cooking dinner did Yukari come out of her bedroom. Despite the fact that she'd apparently just woken up, she looked as well-groomed as ever. Reimu had never quite been certain whether that was a general youkai thing, some strange ability that only Yukari had, or if Yukari was just very meticulous with her grooming. Yukari paused in the doorway when she saw Reimu, but didn't miss a beat. "Well, welcome back."
"Good evening..." Reimu said. She already knew what she'd come here to say, but even so, she found the words sticking in her throat. "I-I. I've made my decision."
"Straight to the point, hmm? Before we talk about that, how about we have dinner?"
Dinner at the Yakumo household was an odd affair. Reimu had eaten with groups before, of course, but usually with dozens of people at parties or feasts. Eating with a group of three or four was something she'd only done a few times, and even then, the conversation was usually dominated by Marisa trying to steal the choicer bits of food off of somebody's plate. This, though, reminded her of nothing more than the few times that she'd eaten with families. Ran gently coaxed Chen into minding her table manners, while filling Yukari in on her day's activities. Keeping track of the number of lost outsiders who'd come through the border, determining how many youkai they could feed... Reimu suspected that it was partially a test for herself, meant to tease out any squeamishness that she still had. She kept her attention on her food and minded her own business.
When it was all done, Yukari gave Ran a kiss on the cheek—Reimu had seen them kiss a few times when they got a quiet moment during festivities at the shrine, but it still made her avert her gaze in embarrassment—and rose to standing. She led Reimu back through the house, to a room that she hadn't seen before. One wall was lined in bookshelves. Even compared to Patchouli's library, most of the books looked ancient. The room was otherwise mostly empty, with only a table and a few pillows. Yukari knelt on one. "Now then," she said, once Reimu had done the same. "What have you decided?"
"Well..." Reimu fumbled, trying to find the right words. "I wish that I could keep being the shrine maiden, but you were right. I can't. I can't even touch the orbs like this. And there isn't really anything for me in the village. I don't really like to admit it, but... I'd miss all of you youkai, if I only got to see you once a year or something. Um. S-so." Reimu cleared her throat and pushed her thoughts back on track. She hadn't quite intended to give that much of an explanation. "I'm... here to talk about becoming your shikigami."
Yukari was smiling, but she'd been smiling since they entered the room. Reimu supposed that the big sack of her belongings in the main room had probably made her choice obvious. "I'm glad to hear that. We could finish the process tonight, if you're willing."
"I don't see why not..." Even so, Reimu had spent so much time thinking about the broader implications of it—becoming a youkai, no longer being the shrine maiden—that she'd barely considered the actual fact that she was going to be a shikigami. Her mind drifted back to Ran's memory again, and the foreign thoughts that buzzed through her head. Was it going to be like that the whole time? She'd already come to think of the crystal clear memories that she'd developed since the attack as the shikigami part of her mind. Was it just going to encompass more of her? She tried not to think about that too much. Ran was already a shikigami, and she was practically the most normal-sounding youkai in Gensokyo when she wasn't rattling off probabilities.
Yukari nodded. "It's easier to finish your programming if you're asleep, so if you'd like to go to bed after this, we can get started. But first," she said, then leaned closer, with a challenging smirk growing on her face, "have you solved my riddle yet?"
"Not really, no. I don't think you planned it or anything... I guess you just didn't want me to die."
"Simply enough, yes. I didn't want to make a big deal about this before you'd made a decision, because I didn't want it to feel like I was pressuring you... but saving you was a risk, and I don't take risks lightly. I've permanently given you a piece of my soul. Thanks to the bond between us, when you die, I will be unwell for months. And getting my stomach ripped open wasn't all that enjoyable, either. … I don't say this to make you feel obligated to me for what I've done, but to help you understand how important I felt it was to save you."
"... w-well, thanks." Reimu had frozen in place, and she had to very consciously force herself to move, trying to adopt a more casual posture. She could feel that she was blushing profusely, and it was only made worse by Yukari's unshakeable demeanor. "I don't see why I'm so important, though... Without my shrine maiden powers, I'm not much of a fighter."
"I never said it was a matter of ability. I've seen a dozen generations of shrine maidens. Honestly, you're not the most powerful of them. But none of them were quite like you. If all I wanted was a tool, I could bind an army of spirits large enough to fill Gensokyo. Somebody I'm comfortable spending centuries with is much rarer."
If Reimu had been embarrassed before, now she felt like she might die from it. What did you even say to something like that? Some distant part of her brain managed to make her squeak out, "I'm honored?"
It seemed to satisfy Yukari, at least. For once, she didn't tease Reimu over her embarrassment for half an hour. She satisfied herself with reaching out to caress Reimu's cheek before she rose to standing. "Well then. Why don't we get you moved into your new room, and Ran and I can get to work?"