The sun peeked through the heavy curtains, illuminating a thin line of the floor near the bed stand with its bright ultraviolet light. A head of messy blue hair peeked out from underneath the thick, crimson duvet of an oversized bed and pulled itself upwards out of the covers. The little vampire blinked away the sleep in her eyes and looked towards the floor at the minuscule amount of light that made it through her laminated glass windows.

"Hmm. Looks to be about 8 in the morning then." The vampire commented.

All the windows in the apartment had been laminated before the pair had moved in, for safety reasons. But despite the vampire's aversion to sunlight, it still had its benefits, like saving on the electrical bill or even using it to tell the time. And the 00current time was still pretty early, noted the vampire.

Remilia looked over the blissfully sleeping satori she shared her bed with, still a long way from her ten o'clock ringing and waking her up. She looked really cute when sleeping.

"Heh, looks like I woke up first this time huh, Satori?" Remilia stretched a bit and got out of bed, careful not to stir her sleeping girlfriend. It had been hard trying to adjust to a diurnal sleep pattern, but it was always more fun spending time with Satori in the day, when more restaurants and other businesses were open. She still doesn't regret the change though, if it meant she could see her lover's face framed by the light like this every time she woke up next to her.

"Seeing her sleepily try to prepare for work is super cute too." Remilia snickered. "Maybe I'll fix us some scrambled eggs today."

Remilia proceeded to the bathroom, preparing to make a meal of questionable quality in the kitchen soon after.

Winter.

The cold, biting wind, the dead, barren trees, and the pure white snow gathering around the roots of trees undeniably signified the arrival of winter. It was finally here.

Maybe she was a bit too excited? That was understandable though, seeing as Letty was about to wake up any time now, and all she had to do was wait at their agreed meeting spot and Letty would come and meet her soon.

Any time now…

"Hiyaaah!" Suddenly, Shizuha leapt backwards, feeling where a horribly cold thing had touched the back of her neck just moments prior. Turning around, she was met with the face of the woman she had been so anxiously anticipating the arrival of.

"Sorry Shizuha, did I surprise you?" Ah she was so kind.

"Yes but I wouldn't worry about it! It's my fault for being surprised by the cold in the winter, haha."

"You say that but you're still shivering, would you like a hug?" Letty teased. Shizuha would've definitely taken her up on her offer had she been serious though.

"Are you trying to give me hypothermia or something? Pfft." Someday though, maybe she would be serious.

"And so? What do you have to say for yourself?" The menreiki, hannya mask on her head, chided.

"I'm sorry I won't do it again," Koishi sincerely responded. "I didn't know that putting sake in the pan would cause a fire."

Kokoro sighed. "Whatever, you're banned from the kitchen, I hope you know that."

"Yes ma'am."

Koishi was sitting seiza position in front of her angry girlfriend, and was being scolded for a mistake she made while trying to 'help' in cooking. This wasn't just any old scolding though, she had gotten scolded much worse for much bigger mistakes, however, this time was different.

In all the months they've lived together, this was the first time Koishi had actually trembled under Kokoro's gaze.

Koishi looked back up at the angry pink-haired girl, gulping. This was the scariest scolding she had ever experienced. Why? Because something that Koishi thought impossible was happening right now in front of her.

Hata no Kokoro was frowning.

Kogasa walked through the village, without anything to do, maybe even a human to surprise, but mostly, she was just humming 'Beware the Umbrella Left There Forever' to herself while looking for someone with a broken tool they were willing to let her fix.

No one trusts me anyway. The kasa-obake silently complained to herself. Apart from the handful of people who either wanted co-existence with youkai or those who simply did not care, nobody really trusted her enough to give her forge any business. She didn't really need money to survive, but not being trusted still hurt a bit. Maybe she should start pretending to be human like Banki.

Speaking of Banki, while wandering aimlessly around the village, Kogasa had found that she had subconsciously made her way to her girlfriend's apartment. Maybe it was because she was feeling a bit under the weather lately and wanted to engage in a snuggle session to lift her mood. Whatever the reason, since she was already here, Kogasa told herself that she might as well pay her a visit.

Kogasa was just about to round the corner onto the shaded porch of the apartment building when she heard a couple of loud voices and stopped in her tracks. Already having a suspicion as to who the voices belonged to, she peered around the corner and did a mental fist pump when she realized she was right. It was the love life gossipers.

"Bankiiii, come onnnn let me introduce you to my brother!" Wait, Banki was there?

"Yeah, her brother is pretty muscular and he said likes redheads too!" They we're as annoying and nosy as the umbrella remembered, she sort of wished she could just jump in and rescue her girlfriend.

Sekibanki just proceeded to short-circuit, her eyes darting around in an awkward attempt to escape or excuse herself. That was when her eyes landed on the head of azure hair that was peeking around the corner,

Ah she caught me! I gotta hide. Kogasa's attempt at scurrying away was interrupted by the booming "Kogasa!" that escaped Banki's mouth. What.

"Kogasa you're here thank goodness!" Huh? Why?

"Uh yes I am. Did you need me for something?" Might as well ask right?

Sekibanki grabbed her girlfriend by the wrist and pushed her towards her neighbors who had suddenly gone silent. "This is my girlfriend, Tatara Kogasa!"

What.

They said the third time's a charm right? Well maybe others would think so, but not Shou, and most definitely not Nazrin. Shou was currently prostrating herself in front of the diminutive mouse youkai. For all her credit, she didnt try to make excuses or anything, just immediately went to dogeza.

Nazrin was not impressed however. "I can't believe you lost it a third time like seriously."

Shou just trembled on the ground where she laid. "I'm sorry Naz, I think some fairies took it or something. I swear it wasn't me!"

It was a likely story, the last time it was lost it was actually stolen by the ice fairy Cirno in order to use it as the grand prize for what she called 'Great Fairy Wars ll' before it was inevitably engulfed by the various elemental attacks of the elemental beings, eventually being buried in soil, encased in ice that melted by the time they found it, and had a cluster of weeds grow on it. How exactly fairies managed to steal Shou's greatest treasure two times in a row is still a mystery though.

Nazrin let out a motherly sigh before patting Shou on the head. She was starting to quite like petting her. "It's fine, I don't mind. Let's just go and find it again, shall we? And then let's find those fairies who stole it this time and teach them a lesson, what do you say?" It felt like she was talking to a child, to be honest.

Shou looked up at her with wide eyes. "Really?" Just like a house cat.

"Yes, of course." Shou could've sworn that she saw a benevolent goddess's gentle smile at that moment.

If that goddess had the enlarged ego of a ten year old.

Gensokyo, season 253.

Some intriguing things have been happening in Gensokyo, intriguing but not bad.

The sages of Gensokyo, Yukari Yakumo, Okina Matara, and Kasen Ibaraki, have been contemplating on what the best approach to ensure Gensokyo's future was. They had decided to use Yakumo's ability to try and peek into alternate timelines to gauge the effect of various decisions in Gensokyo's management. To that effect, they had enlisted the aid of Remilia Scarlet to read the fate of each world and paint an accurate timeline, past, present, and future. Satori Komeiji was also recruited for the purpose of catching any details that the vampire either missed or failed to mention. She also acted as a lie detector. However, after looking into the third alternate timeline, both the vampire and satori youkai had become flustered and have postponed the experiment for a few days.

For this year's flower viewing, there was a special performance held by Autumn Leaf Goddess Shizuha Aki, Fairy Herald of Spring Lily White, and Yuki-Onna Letty Whiterock. Spectators had said that the sky had looked like a rain of pink and red glitter, a shimmering shower of the colors of both Autumn and Spring. I wish I had been there to see it.

In the 121st annual Hakurei-Myouren-Shotoku festival, I had seen Hata no Kokoro perform her signature noh play, however it would be important to note that the formerly expressionless youkai, seemed to be displaying a full range of emotions without seeming like she was straining herself. It seems that youkai can overcome their constitution if they tried.

In the same vein of youkai performances, it seems that Choujuu Gigaku is still going strong after all these years. It seems they also kept their promise and managed to bridge the gap between youkai and humans over the decades I had been reincarnating. Now, humans trust youkai like they would any other human, and some humans have decided to court some youkai. People say this was because the karakasa Kogasa Tatara and rokurokubi Sekibanki had proved that youkai could live in the village peacefully. I don't know the extent of veracity to this claim but I'll have to thank them later anyway.

Another thing to note would be the youkai in the Myouren Temple. It always used to a bastion of coexistence but now they have also established a local chapter in the human village, with the avatar of Bishamonten, Shou Toramaru, leading the followers. It also seems that her divine treasure, the Pagoda of Bishamonten, has been locked in a glass case in the local chapter for safe keeping, and is only brought out during sermons and other such religious events.

The most shocking thing that I had seen, however, was that Suzunaan was still open. I had asked around and it's apparently run by Kosuzu's granddaughter and great-granddaughter. That came as a shock but Keine had clarified that it was because Kosuzu had adopted an orphaned girl whose parents were killed by youkai. Kosuzu had adopted her when she was forty eight years old and the girl was six, it also seems that Kosuzu had lived up to be over eighty years old, which is pretty amazing. I'm contemplating on visiting the book rental shop to see how it's going now, and hopefully I can introduce myself to Kosuzu's new family too. Maybe we could talk about cranes?

Author's Notes: And I'm done finally ahhhhh. My keyboard has been spazzing out while writing these author's notes so it has been mildly annoying. Anyway this chapter was the easiest to write despite being the longest, I basically just had to write 6 different short epilogues and Akyuu was like a 2nd shorter epilogue. Epilogues are fun. I tried to make the first SatoRemi in-universe with mild success but it wouldn't sit right with me if it the only one that wasn't included in Akyuu's segment. Speaking of Akyuu's segment, I had thought of making the entire segment an epilogue in the form of an entry in the Gensokyo chronicles, but decided against it. When I was writing the 3rd chapter with Akyuu, I knew at that moment that I wanted an epilogue with a timeskip revolving around her next reincarnation, and I'm really proud of that section.

Anyway, that's it from me, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!