In the three days since her trip into the village—and the confrontation with Shiko—Reimu's life had, somehow, continued. She woke up. She bathed. She alternated between skipping meals, nauseous from the memory of wanting to bite into Shiko's neck, and eating voraciously. Whether or not she ate, she was filled by a constant hunger that felt like it was consuming her from within.

Now, she had a pretty good idea of what she needed to eat, and she wasn't about to allow that to happen. So, she distracted herself. She spent an entire night inspecting the barrier from the air. She helped Ran sew a new outfit for Chen. She sat in the lawn and stargazed with Yukari.

She did anything, whatever she could, to avoid humans and ignore her hunger.

Today, it was reading. She was laying in the grass, struggling her way through a random borrowed novel from Ran's collection, when Yukari's voice buzzed at the edge of her perception. "Reimu, you have mail."

"Coming..."

Reimu closed the book and dropped it back onto her bed through a gap. At this point, it was almost a subconscious action. That part of being a youkai, at least, had come naturally to her. She stood up, and her vision briefly dimmed at the edges.

The hunger was starting to take its toll. Her head felt fuzzy, and she had a bad habit of losing her train of thought. She got tired easily, and found herself shaking after any meaningful exercise. Even now, just walking across the lawn, she caught her attention drifting away and leaving her body running on autopilot. A lifetime of late night battles across Gensokyo had given her plenty of experience at working past her fatigue, but... she wasn't sure how much longer she could keep this up.

"Why would somebody send me mail?" she said, as she rounded the corner of the house.

Yukari was sitting on the front step, across from her usual meeting spot with the crows. Judging by the few who were still lounging in the trees, they'd just finished today's session. "I don't know," Yukari said. With a flick of her wrist, she sent an envelope sailing through the air. Reimu fumblingly caught it. "Why don't you find out?"

Reimu turned the envelope over in her hands as she sat down. It was thick, heavy paper. The only marking on it was a message on the front: "DELIVERY TO REIMU C/O YAKUMO HOUSEHOLD," stamped in blocky red hiragana.

She'd never gotten mail before. In the village, where everything was within walking distance, it was only used by the busier shop owners. As the shrine maiden, she'd never had much need for it. Ripping the flap open gave her an illicit little thrill. She reached inside, pulled the letter out, and unfolded it.

The writing was in Court Tengu, with a hiragana and kanji transliteration below. In the interest of extending Lord Tenma's respectful greetings to the newest servant of the most esteemed youkai sage Yakumo Yukari, and... It just went on and on and on, filling an entire page with tiny ornate characters. Even the bits of Reimu's mind that could now deal with advanced mathematics and sorcery were at a loss for the ornate speech. "Lord Tenma... wants me to visit... today... so he can... pay his respects? I don't understand."

"Hmm," Yukari said. Bent over, she read the letter along with Reimu. "That's because it's a deliberate insult."

"Huh? There are four 'humbly beseech'es and six 'respectfully's in here."

"When dealing with tengu bureaucracy, you need to learn to look at what people say, not the words that they use. Ignore the flowery language, for starters. Now then..." Yukari tapped a spot on the paper. "He says that he would like to see you at his court, and today. If he were speaking to somebody he considers an equal, he'd let you choose the date. The short notice is only a slap to the face on top of it. Two weeks is considered normal for something like this. Moving on... he says that he'd like you to visit to 'strengthen the bonds between...' Ah, this sentence goes on for a while, doesn't it? Most of this is empty words. Really, even by tengu standards, this is impressive."

"Oh." Reimu wasn't sure how to take the news that she'd been subtly insulted by somebody she hadn't even met. "... so what does he actually want?"

"Probably to get a good look at you for himself, and reassure his courtiers that you aren't a threat to the balance of Gensokyo. And, of course, to get some satisfaction out of proving that he can give orders to one of my servants."

"So I shouldn't go, right?"

"Hmm?" Yukari smiled cryptically and tapped her chin with her fan. It had a habit of appearing in her hands without warning. "Well, what would happen if you didn't go?"

"I... don't know. It would show that he can't boss me around, right?"

"Well, yes, but this letter doesn't give you an order. In fact, he even says please. You're giving it a very unkind reading, don't you think?"

"But you just said...!"

Yukari's smile only grew more challenging. "Oh, of course it's an insult. That's only when you are reading below the surface, though. Think of what it would look like to outsiders: The mighty lord of the tengu invites you to tea, and you turn him down? Even worse, since the appointment is this afternoon, there's no way you could send a polite rejection in time. He invites you for tea and you simply don't show up." She hid her face behind her fan and adopted a falsetto. "'Did you hear about Yakumo's new shikigami? She stood up Lord Tenma! So uncouth! Oh, but maybe the poor thing was just frightened.'"

Yukari ended with an exaggerated titter. The sound set Reimu's teeth on edge. "I get it, I get it," she said, and reached over to shove the fan aside. "So I should go, then."

"Normally, I would encourage you to, yes. There are other things to consider, though." Yukari folded her fan closed and set it across her lap. Her expression grew more serious. Reimu knew that she was in trouble the moment that she saw it. "You aren't feeling well, are you?"

Of course Yukari would be the first one to notice. "I'm fine," she said. "Just... tired."

"You're more than just 'tired.' I can feel your emotions, remember? You're hungry."

"... yeah, I am," Reimu admitted. "I'll be okay, though. I just need to eat a bit more."

Yukari did not look convinced. "Reimu," She said, in a softer tone. "You feel like you're halfway starved to death. If there's something wrong, you can tell me."

Reimu glared down at her lap. The idea of telling Yukari about her impulses at the shrine... it was unbearable. Thinking them that was one thing, but saying them out loud was another entirely. She was going to need to tell somebody eventually, but not now. She needed to make some kind of peace with it first. "... maybe later. I'll be fine," she assured Yukari, with a very deliberate smile. "I'm not going to let some youkai tell everybody that I was too scared to talk to him."

Yukari held her gaze, challenging her to back down. "In your condition, I think that you should stay home and rest. You're not in any shape to travel, and you don't know what will be expected of you in Tenma's court. But... I'm not going to order you to stay home, either. If you go, I'll come with you."

"Good," Reimu said, and pushed herself to standing. Even that left her momentarily lightheaded. She did her best to ignore it. "I'll start getting ready, then."

The instructions from Tenma had been to arrive at one of the lowest tengu observation posts, where somebody would arrive to escort them to the top of the mountain. Reimu wasn't sure if this was another of those thinly-veiled insults or not. It did seem a bit rude to just step out of a gap into the middle of somebody's house (not that it had ever stopped Yukari), but walking halfway up the mountain was no short trip.

At least the view was nice. The mountainside was covered in fresh green leaves and spring flowers. The spot that they'd been directed to was a rope bridge that stretched in front of a waterfall. The river below left a narrow treeless corridor to the east, giving it a clear line of sight toward most of Gensokyo. On a clear day, it was probably possible to spot intruders before they'd even passed the foothills.

The location was also burnt into her memories as the site of one of her first battles with a tengu. So she wasn't surprised when she heard a familiar voice from behind her. "Hey, Reimu! Did you get that new shrine maiden sorted out?"

"... not really," Reimu said, and turned around. Already, Aya's hands were busy with her camera. "She doesn't really want to listen to me."

"Ah, that's a shame, that's a shame..." Aya plowed right ahead. "So, before we get going, do you have any comments on—"

Behind Aya, Momiji cleared her throat reproachfully. "Lord Tenma would like to extend his greetings."

"...ah." Aya had already been lifting her camera, but now froze, looking conflicted. "Yeah, that too, that too. We weren't informed that you'd have a guest, but I'm sure it won't be a problem."

"That's very gracious of you. I apologize for imposing," Yukari said, so diplomatically that Reimu could almost imagine that she hadn't been saying that this was an insult mere hours earlier.

As Aya reluctantly tucked her camera away, Momiji stepped past her and gestured toward the path behind her. "This way, please."

Reimu spoke very little for the rest of the trip up the mountain. Yukari had been right to be worried about her: before long, her hunger was making it difficult enough to just focus on the path ahead and keep walking. Her legs felt heavy and her vision swam. It didn't help that she would have usually been in bed hours earlier. Just as she was starting to think that she might need to say something, the first hints of the tengu village were appearing around them.

Reimu had never visited the tengu village that often. As much as they liked gossip and parties, the tengu preferred to keep other races out of their territory unless they had a good reason to be there. Still, she'd been there often enough to not be totally surprised by their surroundings. It was nothing like she would have expected from a youkai settlement. The streets were wide and impeccably clean. The trees that towered over the village were trimmed so perfectly that they looked like they were out of a storybook. They formed a near-solid canopy overhead, all to help shield the village from the sight of the humans below. Even the layout—scattered wolf tengu family houses around the perimeter, with the buildings toward the center more tightly-packed and varying more in size—felt like the product of careful planning.

Soon, the four had reached the largest building in the city, the headquarters of the tengu bureaucracy. It was a wooden lodge, a domelike building of rough hewn wood, with red lacquered trim and a pillar of smoke coming from a squat chimney. It struck Reimu as both rustic and intimidating at the same time. Standing outside were two wolf tengu guards with naginata, who waved the group through at a gesture from Aya.

"Try to relax," Yukari mentally commented. "The letter was flowery bullshit, but Tenma is a straightforward man. Just think of him as an oni and you'll be fine."

"... so don't bother lying, and be careful with any drinks he offers."

"More or less. He may be trying to make me lose face today, but that's just politics. He won't do anything to hurt you, especially not with me here."

The corridors of the building soon opened into a much larger room, big enough to fit most of the Hakurei shrine inside of it. Apart from the size, it was tastefully subdued compared to most other youkai abodes that Reimu had seen. Tenma's seat was in front of a window that looked out over a waterfall, framing him with rushing water. A square fire pit sat in the center of the room, currently crackling and keeping the place as hot as a sauna. Two small braziers flanked the throne. Otherwise, the room was nearly empty, apart from the line of wolf tengu guards discreetly standing along the back wall.

Although Tenma was plenty intimidating enough to make the room feel full anyway. He looked almost human, but just felt... larger, in every way. His hair was a wild black mess, only trimmed just short enough to keep it from hanging past his shoulders, and his face was hidden behind a red tengu mask... seeing them at festivals in the village, Reimu had always thought that the long noses had made them look goofy. The real article, rather less so. It reduced his expression to a constant baleful glare. Between the mask and his red-and-white robe, very little of him was actually visible. Only the clawed hands resting on the arms of his throne hinted that there was an actual person under there.

"Lord Tenma," Aya said, in a tone that was far, far more serious than anything that Reimu had ever heard from her before. "As requested, I've brought—"

"The former shrine maiden, yes." Somehow, Tenma's voice managed to be both scratchy and boomingly deep. "And Miss Yakumo. Welcome. Please, have a seat."

Aya and Momiji lingered by the door, while Reimu considered her options. Without any cushions in the room, the only sensible place to sit was kneeling on the floor in front of the throne. She wasn't sure if this was another veiled insult or not, but at this point, she couldn't care. The walk up the mountain had left her exhausted, and she felt like she might not make it another step. As soon as she was close enough, she allowed herself to kneel, and hoped that she had managed to make it not look completely inelegant. "Thank you, Lord Tenma."

"I apologize for only meeting you now. I have heard your name in plenty of reports, I assure you. Usually followed by obscenities." Tenma chuckled. "You were the first human in generations to fight her way past the tengu patrols. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Reimu looked up. Through the mask's eye holes, she could see Tenma's eyes, yellow and narrow-slitted. She held his gaze for a few seconds as she considered her response. Treat him like an oni, right... "I wouldn't have needed to do it if they would have left me alone in the first place. Next time, try telling them to stay out of my way."

Even by her usual standards of dealing with unfamiliar youkai, it was a bit blunt. For a second, she wondered if she might have gone too far. Then, Tenma threw his head back and burst into raucous guffaws of laughter. The sound was enough to make the entire room reverberate. "Hah! I just might. I think that half of them are more afraid of you than they are of me." The exchange seemed to have dispelled some of the tension in the room. With a gesture of one massive hand, he dismissed the the tengu at the back of the room. They hurried out the door, leaving only Aya behind. "I have questions for you, but I've made you walk so far already. Please, relax. Have a drink with me, and we will get to know each other before we discuss business."

Reimu really didn't need to add alcohol on top of her current condition... but she had no idea how to turn down the offer in these circumstances without being rude. For once, she knew how Sanae had felt at parties at the shrine. "I would be honored," she said.

Already, as a pair of servants carried in an overladen tray of jugs and bottles, she was wondering if she'd gotten herself in over her head.