The lights of the hundreds of hanging lanterns lit up a path weaving between rows and rows of festival stalls. From yakitori and lamprey grills, to floating lantern shops and make-your-own festival mask workshops, the 10th annual Hakurei-Myouren-Shotoku festival hosted hundreds of different stalls for fun activities of all kinds, putting smiles on the faces of all the children who participated, human or otherwise.

At least it put a smile on almost all of their faces.

Hata no Kokoro was a menreiki, a tsukumogami born from sixty-six different masks. Specifically, they were the masks used by Hata no Kawakatsu to perform the first instances of noh plays as ordered by the legendary Prince Shotoku over a Millennium ago. Such a storied youkai with a historical backstory such as kokoro would be hard to impress you'd think, but that was far from the case. In fact it was easy to tell what mood she was in, her sixty-six masks gave that away with whichever one she had on at the time, so she was clearly enjoying herself. And yet there wasn't a single trace of a smile or even upturned lip on her face. In fact, no one yet had seen her smile.

Hata no Kokoro was called 'The Expressive Poker Face' for a reason after all.

But Koishi Komeiji felt like that wasn't fair. Someone as cute as Kokoro had to smile. She had to! She hid so much emotion and passion behind her mask of emotionlessness just because that's how she was and couldn't help it? Isn't that unfair? That's what Koishi thought. Koishi also thought that Kokoro would look really cute if she smiled. Wait, did she say that already?

Anyway Koishi wanted to make Kokoro smile today, even if she had to teach her how to herself.

Therefore, tonight will mark the beginning of Operation Colon Parenthesis! Otherwise known as operation make kokoro smile. So here's plan numero uno! Tell her a funny joke! Koishi thought this one would work well, after all, who didn't smile while they laughed? Answer: No one!

And here was the target, hereby as designated subject K. She still wasn't smiling but that will change!

From here on, Operation CP shall commence!

Koishi approached Kokoro, still readying the plan and finding the opportune moment to strike. Kokoro saw Koishi and regarded her with the same apathetic gaze she gave everyone else. However, her mask was different than usual. The monkey mask. Confusion? Why was she confused?

"Why did you invite me to the festival Komeiji? Are you finally going to return my mask?"

"No, why would you think that?" Now Koishi was confused, she didn't say anything about a mask? Did she?

"I just don't understand why else you'd ask me out to the festival, dont bother returning it though i don't really need it anymore."

Oh that was a relief. "Ah that's good! It means that you can feel hope even without your mask of hope now! Learning emotions is a good thing!"

"Yes but you still haven't answered my question." What question?

"What question?"

Hannya mask. Anger. "Why am I here Komeiji?"

Hmm. Subject K seems agitated. "Because I wanted to hang out and have fun?"

Raiden mask. Surprise. "What?"

"I wanted to hang out with you at the festival! I saw some fun games over there, let's go!"

Koishi then proceeded to drag Kokoro by the hand to the nearest mini game booth. Kokoro donning a Raiden mask the whole time. Koishi meanwhile, was happy to complete one of Operation CP's secondary objectives: holding hands! People smile with their friends and good friends hold hands right?

The nearest game happened to be a shooting game where you shot at prizes with a fake gun. This should be easy, in fact, Koishi could probably get the top prize with an eye closed! Heh. Ooh maybe she should use that! Okay, Operation CP: Plan 1, commence!

"Ahem," Koishi fake coughed. "I would like to win top prize please."

The person behind the counter seemed nonplussed, must be used to children. "Of course miss! That would be 100 yen."

It was a good thing Koishi had asked for money from her sister. Satori said to spend responsibly though, whatever that meant. "Here!" Koishi handed her the coin.

"Thank you for your patronage. You get 5 shots per attempt, be careful with it and don't aim it at other patrons please."

Subject K just looked on unimpressed. Fox mask. Oooh she was serious? Koishi looked at the top prize and realized why the subject was so focused on it. It was a Tanuki plushie. Miss Mamizou was a Tanuki too! They were friends.

Koishi needed to get that plush. It was so cute! Koishi was ready. All five bullets were loaded. It was time to let loose and look cool!

"Bang bang bang bang pow!"

And just like that, with five strategically placed shots, the massive and probably pretty heavy stuffed animal fell off the shelf and was picked up by the game operator and she gave it to Koishi. "Here's your prize miss, congratulations!"

Koishi accepted it with all the smugness of a ten year old and looked at Kokoro. "Heh, easy peasy, I could've done that with one of my eyes closed!"

Subject K seems to be processing the joke. Fuku no Kami mask. Humor. She found it funny! This was it!

And then Kokoro gave a dry chuckle.

…

Note to self: Subject looks really weird when she laughs.

The other plans didn't go so well either. Plan two resulted in a Hannya mask and a couple bruises after Koishi tried to initiate a tickle fight. No smile. Plan three was Koishi trying a bunch of pick up lines on the subject because Satori had said that pick up lines made you smile like an idiot. Mission resulted in failure after the subject donned her monkey mask and didn't get any of the pick up lines. Koishi was too embarrassed to try to explain. Plan four was to show the subject something cute. Satori always smiled whenever she saw her pets after all! But Koishi couldn't think of anything cuter than Kokoro herself so she handed the subject a mirror. The subject was confused again and also had the monkey mask this time as well. Failure. Plan five was a bust too, asking the subject to pose for a photo and smile created what could possibly be the most haunted photograph in the history of Gensokyo.

That was it. It was time to pull out all the stops. Koishi was down to her final plan here, Plan F, and she couldn't fail. Despite everything however, Kokoro seemed to actually be enjoying herself, she had a Hyottoko mask on and was bouncing around like she was excited for whatever else Koishi had planned.

This was it. Plan number six. Do something heartwarming! Satori says that whenever someone does something really heartwarming and sweet you couldn't help but smile. So that's what Koishi plans to do! She couldn't think of anything much though so she decides to go the simple route. But first, she must distract the subject.

"Kokoro! I'm hungry!"

Still the Hyottoko. Good. "Hmm? And why are you telling me?"

"Buy me food!"

Silence. "Okay, what do you want?" The subject seemed strangely cooperative. "I'm pretty much used to your randomness by now."

Okay this was it. "I want some caramel apples and maybe some grilled lamprey! I think they had it over at the other side of the festival."

A sigh. "Fine, it'll take a while though so stay here."

"Okay!"

"What is with that girl?" Kokoro asked herself aloud as she walked down the crowded festival path, two candied apples in one hand and eight skewers of lamprey in the other. She wore a Hyottoko mask and seemed to be in a good mood despite her blank look.

From early in the afternoon, Koishi had been jerking her around, from one stall to the nexts seemingly randomly. They had eaten at a total of seven different stalls and had played at around twenty-two more. Overall, it was fun.

Despite the reservations she had held when she was first invited, she actually ended up enjoying herself today, even if she really did just come because she was curious at first. It still begged the question of why she was invited in the first place though, didn't Komeiji have pets?

Monkey mask. Confused. This question bothered Kokoro her entire time at the festival. Why her? Why did Komeiji invite her of all people? To make up for when she stole her mask of hope? Well, whatever.

Kokoro made it back to the meeting spot that she told Koishi to wait at and switched back to her Hyottoko mask. She couldn't see Koishi, but really that should be pretty much expected of the younger Komeiji. She was excited though.

"Ah Kokoro! You're back!" There she was.

"Komeiji," Kokoro started to turn around. "Where did yo-"

"Wait! Stop! Don't look! Don't turn around! Actually, close your eyes!"

Sigh. More random Komeiji antics. What did they say? Expect the unexpected was it? "Okay okay, what now?"

"Just follow me! You can eat your apple while we walk!" Kokoro felt one of the apples leave her hand. Looks like they were both eating then.

A five minute walk and one apple later and they had suddenly stopped. Is it finally time for me to find out what this is about? "Well Komeiji?"

"Ahem. Yes. You may open your eyes."

Finally. Kokoro slowly opened her eyes, she didn't know what to expect, and whoever she expected she'd probably still be wrong anyway, but Koishi holding sixty-six glowing balloons definitely was not it. Ah, they were lanterns.

"Ahem. Hata no Kokoro," Koishi released the lanterns. "I hope you enjoyed your time today."

She did, and now she was looking at the sky, it looked like a bunch of artificial stars had just been scattered across the sky.

"I know you didn't really have the best opinion of me since I stole your mask," She didn't, but that was all in the past now, Kokoro thought that Koishi was pretty fun to be around. "But I hope that I can make it up to you. So here."

Koishi revealed a mask. It was a simple theater mask, a crescent smile painted on with a lacking peach-colored paint job and a smattering of pink for the hair. "I made you a new mask of hope. I'm sorry for not returning the one before."

Kokoro was in awe. Which mask did she have on right now? She didn't even know. She took the mask from Koishi and stared at it for a while before looking back at Koishi, a smile on her face that she didn't even know she was making.

"Thank you, Koishi."

Koishi proceeded to spend the rest of the night shouting about what an awesome success Operation CP was, whatever that meant.

Author's Notes: I love Kokoro, she's like my little poker faced daughter, easily in my top 10 fave 2hus. Well, the prompt was 'festival' and the first thing to pop into mind were the Noh performances that Kokoro would put on in parties. I see a lot of Touhou fanart where Kokoro performed in the background so I decided to write about her, and Koishi actually did seem to have a good dynamic with her so yeah. Writing Koishi was fun because I didn't need to focus on writing well, or formal, I just needed to focus on writing Koishi. I modeled her inner monologues off of my own chaotic ones so it was pretty fun. I decided to make this story about making Kokoro smile because it was really cute. It also reminds me of Khornime's final youtube upload 'When s/he finally smile' *sob* man the nostalgia of that channel bro. F