The days continued, in their new, unfocused fashion. So did Yukari's quiet patience. She'd come in every morning and evening with Reimu's two main meals, and spend an hour or two talking with her each time. After the first day, their conversations avoided the topic of Reimu's diet. In a way, it was nice. Avoiding the big issues, they didn't have anything to discuss but small talk and gossip. During their conversations, Reimu could almost imagine that she was sitting on the shrine's steps again, and not confined to a bed.

At times, her hunger was like a fire in her stomach, making it impossible to think about anything else. Other times, it ebbed away, leaving her feeling almost normal for a precious few hours.

Above all, she tried to keep herself too busy to dwell on the question of whether or not to allow herself to keep starving. She read a few of the books on philosophy and divination that she'd grabbed when she moved in, but often found herself unable to focus well enough to follow them. After Chen seemed overjoyed at getting the first picture, she tried to draw her a new one every day.

Today, she was practicing divinations. It was one of the few nearly-productive things that she could do in bed. Her shikigami programming would allow her to perform one in seconds in her head, but she had no reason to hurry. Instead, she tossed coins by hand, looking up hexagrams in books and pulling up astrology charts, combining half a dozen methods for the kind of precision that she'd learned to associate with Ran.

There was no way that she was going to check her own destiny right now. Nothing good could come of it. Everybody else, though, was fair game.

Marisa: a high chance of minor conflict, followed by material gain without spiritual advancement. No surprises there. Sanae: contentment, with a 61% chance of beginning a new romantic relationship by the turn of the season. She'd be happy to hear that. She'd certainly whined about her lack of dating options often enough. Youmu: hard work, hampered by a counterproductive amount of self-reliance; she would lose something, but ultimately not miss it. That was a bit vague, and boring enough that Reimu didn't bother with the further calculations to clarify it. Yukari: … hadn't had her birthdate and time in the very thorough list that Reimu had found loaded in her shikigami programming. It was probably best not to think about it too hard.

Shiko... "Yukari, could you take a look at something?"

"Of course. One moment."

By the time Yukari arrived, Reimu had laid out her entire thought process. The focused work had helped to keep her otherwise meandering mind collected, but presenting its contents was rather harder. "So," she said, after five minutes of explanation. "I'm reading this right, right? Her... lack of personal cultivation..." She furrowed her brow as she spoke, tracing her finger from diagram to diagram across four different books. "... leads to a 47% chance of great disaster, with a... um, 31.1% chance of death? That seems pretty high."

"You made a mistake in one cross reference, but that was otherwise pretty good for a beginner," Yukari said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "But, yes, those generally line up with Ran's estimations."

"You already knew?"

"Ran performs periodic divinations to predict any major changes in Gensokyo. It's only natural to check the shrine maiden, of course."

It made enough sense. Reimu accepted the argument and considered where to take the conversation from there, until a thought caught in her mind. "... so did you know that I was going to...?"

"Your youkai hunt? 'Great danger 61%, death 18%,'" Yukari recited. "I did insist on coming along for a reason. And warned you to that effect, as I remember. I simply... failed to prevent you from being injured. The future is always mutable, but that doesn't mean that trying to intervene it is always enough."

With a frown, Reimu looked back to the charts. "I don't know how to check for how she's going to die, though. She's making the youkai angry, so I think somebody's going to try killing her, but..."

"I wouldn't be surprised. That isn't divination, it's common sense. Most shrine maidens die to youkai," Yukari said. "Before the spell card system, most meetings between humans and youkai ended in a fight to the death. Nobody wants to go back to those days... except apparently your successor."

"She's not evil. She just really doesn't trust youkai," Reimu said, with a sigh. And nine years ago, I would have killed Chen, myself. "That doesn't mean she deserves to die."

"And what do you plan to do about it?"

"I... don't know. There has to be something I can do."

"Taking all the responsibility in Gensokyo on yourself again, hm?" Yukari said with a slight smile. "... but I agree. That would be best for everybody. Although you might find it easier if you were able to walk more than ten meters without collapsing."

Reimu scowled and looked back to the charts. Yukari had been thankfully silent on the topic of her health for the past few days. There had been no way it wouldn't come up again, but she still wasn't prepared for it. "Do we really have to talk about that right now?"

"Not if you don't want to. I haven't heard a final decision from you, though."

Reimu nodded glumly. Even after days of thinking about it, she hadn't come any closer to a resolution. It was just one of those sorts of questions. There was no option here that appealed to her. Every time she was even broadly reminded of it, it tied her brain up in knots, with no resolution in sight. "I don't want to eat people. It's wrong," she murmured. It was the only thing that she was sure about.

"Hmm. I can't pretend that it's the moral thing to do, so if you were hoping for a 'law of the jungle' speech, you're going to be disappointed. Eating humans is the cost of our continued existence as youkai, and nothing more. It is no more or less moral than when the wolf kills the rabbit. But...these days, most of the outsiders that we eat also come here intending to commit suicide. After the nearby area in the outside world got a reputation for being dangerous, it started attracting those who wanted to die anyway. It still isn't moral, of course, but many of them would have found other ways to kill themselves."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Perhaps a little. You'll also find that most youkai don't need to eat much. A handful of humans could feed all of Gensokyo for months, if we rationed ourselves. Over the course of a millennium, you might only be responsible for a dozen deaths."

"That's still too many."

"Is it?" Yukari raised one eyebrow. "What's an acceptable number? Ten? Five? One? How many strangers' lives are an acceptable trade for your own?"

"None."

"Is that so? Unconditionally? You've killed youkai to save human lives. How is this different? Who determines when the scales are balanced?"

"I don't know, probably the yama," Reimu said dismissively. The conversation felt like it was sapping what little energy she had. With a grunt of exertion—even scooting around the bed was a strain in her weakened state—she slid over and leaned against Yukari from behind. Wrapping her arms around Yukari's waist, she pulled herself in close.

This, this was one of the few things that she'd found that helped soothe her when she got too worried at the looming possibility of her own death. Even in the dead of night, she could always feel Yukari's comforting presence through the mental link. Sometimes, it felt like the only thing that kept her going. She buried her face against Yukari's shoulder. "I don't want to eat people," she said again, exhaling slowly.

"I know."

"But I don't want to die."

"I don't want you to, myself." Yukari reached up and tousled Reimu's hair with one hand. "Reimu, I know that this is a hard decision. It goes against everything that you were taught is right. But... you were young when you became the shrine maiden. You were barely more than a child when the village chose you. I saw you on the first day. They'd given you the smallest uniform, and it was still too baggy for you. You were... very small, back then." Her voice was quiet now, with a faraway, wistful tone to it. "You were barely more than a child, and you were chosen to be the line between humanity and the darkness. You spent ten years of your life protecting the balance of Gensokyo, and you barely got so much as a 'thank you.' Nobody could blame you for a little selfishness now."

"Eating people is... a bit more than 'selfish.'"

"Mmh." Yukari stayed silent for several seconds. "... I was involved in the decision to choose you as the shrine maiden, you know. There were no good options. The previous one died so young that they hadn't even started training a replacement yet. Choosing you was the only thing we could have done. It was also unforgivable." Yukari leaned back now, until they were almost cheek-to-cheek. Below, her hands slid down to rest on top of Reimu's. "You deserve to be happy. I owe you that much."

Reimu could feel Yukari's body heat through the thin layer of her clothes. It was a strangely familiar sensation, like the comforting presence that she felt when Yukari reached out to her through their mental link. Touching it, now, she was surprised at the strength of Yukari's emotions, cold and sharp like a fresh memory of loss. Normally, she would have recoiled from the sensation. Today, though, she allowed it to suffuse her. She felt Yukari reach out for her across the bond in return. They sat in silence, sharing their mingled regrets and fear and melancholy and disgust.

Reimu did have to admit to herself: She couldn't keep living like this until she died. Not happily, at least. Other people might have been able to, but she hadn't seen some of her friends in weeks. Was she going to visit them like this, and have their last memories of her be her laying on her death bed, a shadow of her former self? That almost struck her as worse than never seeing them again. And now, in Yukari's emotions, she got her first taste of just how long a youkai's life could be. Was she selfless enough to sacrifice decades of life for some strangers' wellbeing? Centuries? Millennia?

She wanted so badly to be able to say yes. Instead, she felt her body moving almost like she was in a dream, with her conscious still not quite claiming responsibility for her actions. "How much... would I even need to eat?"

Reimu still couldn't believe that she'd allowed Yukari to talk her into this. Or, at least, she liked to believe that that was how it had worked. After that first question, one tiny concession in a week-long standoff, it had all been over. She'd just kept asking more and more direct questions, thinking, I'm too far to back out now, for the entire conversation. She never quite decided on anything. Instead, it was the slow capitulation of somebody who had wanted to be convinced all along. Before she'd known it, Yukari was asking, "What sort of dish would you like for your first time?"

She was torn between nausea and hunger. It was becoming a familiar sensation. Her stomach was already completely empty. She hadn't been eating or drinking much for the past few days, since it only served to torment her with her lack of satiation. What little had been in her stomach this morning, she'd vomited out long ago. She still found herself dry-heaving occasionally, when she thought too hard about what was coming.

And yet, she felt relieved. The decision had been made. The great moral conflict was over. She didn't need to struggle anymore. She could just sit back and enjoy the consequences.

Footsteps approached her room, and Reimu was filled with an odd mixture of dread and relief. "Are you ready?" Yukari asked through the door.

"I-I, um..." Reimu took a deep breath, then hissed it out between her teeth to steady herself. "Yeah, come in."

Without response, Yukari pushed the door open. She was dressed in her full formal regalia, the white dress with a violet panel. It was the first time that Reimu had seen her in it since her collapse. In her hands was a saucer. On top was a thick, generous wedge of cake. It was a miniature work of art, neat and perfect enough that it would almost be a sacrilege to eat it. The body was marbled yellow and white, looking as delicate as spun sugar. Peeking out from within it were tidy lines of strawberries. The white icing on top was thick and gooey, and Reimu knew that it was the perfect balance of sweet and buttery richness. She'd seen this cake before, after all, and eaten some very similar ones.

The ones she'd eaten, though, lacked an important ingredient. Two thick, glistening red stripes ran down the center, holding the layers together. The color was just a bit too dark for her to convince herself that it was only jam.

"That's one of Sakuya's...?"

"Her cakes for the devil's sister, yes. You'll need more than blood eventually, but this will do for now," Yukari said. "Remilia sends her regards, and wishes you a speedy recovery."

Yukari offered the cake over, and Reimu hesitated. This close, she imagined that she could smell the stink of death coming off of it. It smelled only of sugar and raspberries, though. Slowly, she reached out and took it, then lowered the saucer onto her lap. Yukari sat down on the edge of the bed and wrapped one arm around her for support. "Take your time."

Reimu nodded, but could barely bring herself to move otherwise. Her throat was tight and sore from hours of choking back her nausea. As she stared down at the cake, it felt like time in the room had ground to a halt. Outside, she could hear birds singing, as if trying to remind her that the world would keep moving whether or not she was there to see it. Chen peeked into the doorway, only for Ran's hand to tug her back. A hushed conversation came from the other side of the door.

With her hand trembling, she lifted the delicate silver fork from the saucer. The bite that she cut off was a small one, but she made sure to get a generous piece of a red layer. There was no point in easing herself into this now. As she raised it, she took another slow, steadying breath. Then, before she could stop herself, she pushed it into her mouth.

Reimu's first reaction was to cringe. She'd expected some horrible, unclean taste. Mostly, it just tasted like cake. Sweet, with a delicate body and a rich, creamy icing. Only after those initial flavors had spread across her tongue did she taste the undertones: The coppery tang of human blood, the taste of busted lips and missing teeth. It was...

It was wonderful.

It quenched some primal need she'd barely even been aware of, like water to somebody dying of thirst. The tension drained out of Reimu's body, and for the first time in a week, she could feel herself growing less hungry. By the time she swallowed, she was already cutting off another bite. She let out a shaky sigh of mixed desperation and satisfaction, and Yukari's arm gave her a reassuring squeeze.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Yukari said softly. "I think this calls for a celebration."