As Tenshi slowly came to, the first coherent thoughts that formed in her mind was how badly she wished she was still passed out. Her head felt like it was being pounded from the inside, and it was exacerbated by the feeling of her entire body feeling like it was swaying and shifting to and fro at random.
"Oogh, I feel like I'm going to throw up..." Tenshi moaned as she begrudgingly blinked her eyes open. When she did open them fully, however, she was alarmed that she only continued to see nothing but darkness. "And I've gone blind too?!"
"Woah, you're talking?!" A voice exclaimed in response, and in the next moment, the sheet that was draped over Tenshi's body was pulled aside.
"Who?! Where...?" Tenshi flinched at the sudden light, but soon adjusted. When she saw the underworld's cavernous expanse above moving across her vision, she realised the swaying she was experiencing was actually because she was being carried along in a cart of some sort.
"By the way, no throwing up in my wheelbarrow!" The one pushing said wheelbarrow said in a huff. Her tone immediately lightened when she spoke again. "Didn't expect you to start talking all of a sudden. Should have figured such a nasty death would have you with lingering regrets."
"Huh? Death?" Tenshi didn't properly register any of the words she just heard. Her surroundings were only just now becoming more clear, as she realised she was lying inside a wheelbarrow, and being carried along some nondescript rocky path. She craned her neck, an effort far more difficult than she would have cared to admit, to get a look at the person pushing her. "...A cat?"
"Nya!" Her distinct cat ears twitched as she smiled at Tenshi. "I'm a kasha, to be precise. Kaenbyou Rin, at your service! Oh, but since we're going to be very well-acquainted soon, you can go ahead and start calling me Orin!"
"What do you mean by that? I don't get what you're saying." Getting tired of talking like this, Tenshi tried climbing out of the wheelbarrow. However, she only got as far as lifting one arm, a tremendous effort in of itself, before feeling too winded to keep trying. "Ugh, I can't move... I must've really done a number on myself this time."
"I'll say. You went and got yourself killed!" Rin cheerily said. "My job is to carry away any corpses I find, and on the side, I... make friends with any spirits that come out of it."
"Hold on, corpses? You mean me ?" Tenshi might not have considered herself the greatest expert when it came to matters of the soul, but she was quite confident she could tell whether she was deceased or not. "But I'm not dead."
"Sorry to break the news to you like this, but I'm pretty sure you are."
"I'm talking to you right now, aren't I?" However, Tenshi quickly realised that alone didn't discount anything, considering how many ghosts she's met before. "Well, if I'm dead, then how did I die, huh?"
"More like how didn't you die! Your body was infected by a tsuchigumo's disease, your mind shredded by a hashihime's curse, and you reek of the oni's speciality sake. Any of these alone would be enough to do someone in."
"Yeah, well, maybe someone ordinary couldn't have handled it, but I happen to be a celestial. The greatest celestial, for that matter, Hinanawi Tenshi! Such things can't even inconvenience me." Tenshi instinctively tried flicking her hair as she said that, but her numb body failed her.
"A celestial, huh?" Rin listened, deciding to humour her newest friend. Even beyond all the things Rin just mentioned, Tenshi was also carrying the distinct, lingering scent of palpable misfortune emanating from her, the kind Rin only usually only found on the most unfortunate of the recently deceased. "You sound pretty amazing! But when I found you..."
"This usually wouldn't inconvenience me, anyway. I don't know, maybe I overdid it a little, and somehow, it all caught up with me at once… Just give me a bit, and I'll be right as rain!"
"So you must be expecting to get back on your feet any second now, huh?" Rin said, sounding sincere as she could. It wouldn't be good to laugh at the delusions of a talking corpse in denial of their death. In her experience, it was easier to let these folks realise they were dead at their own pace. "That'd be pretty impressive!"
"I'll shake it off in no time. I'm just not precisely sure how long it'll take." At the very least, Tenshi felt like her headache was already slowly starting to fade, and she could almost start feeling her fingers again.
"In that case, I'll keep you company until then. Not like you have anything else to be doing, right?"
"I think I was supposed to be somewhere..." Tenshi glanced around. The surroundings weren't familiar at all, and she got the vague sense that they were moving away from the capital. "Say, uh, Orin, right?"
"That's me, alright!"
"I appreciate the lift, but where are you taking me?"
"Definitely someplace nicer than the bottom of the hill I found you in. I'm still on the clock, so I have to pass by this road for work."
"Okay, then when you're done, could you take me back to the capital? There are people waiting for me."
Always such a sad line to hear, Rin thought to herself. "I'll do my best to make sure you reach your ultimate destination. In return, could you sate this cat's curiosity, and tell me just how did you end up in such a peculiarly dire state?"
"Did I really look that bad when you found me?"
"Absolutely dreadful." Rin resisted the urge to comment that Tenshi currently didn't look any better since then. "You looked like you were in a rush to experience all the dangers in the Underworld, and fell face first into as many dangerous youkai as possible."
"Don't say it like that!" Tenshi groaned. The whole thing was just deeply embarrassing in hindsight. "I was eager to embrace the underground life! I had a little slip-up, but that just means I need to get used to it."
"Yeah, I could tell you're from the surface, so what kind of troubles would make you want a new life all the way down here?"
"I come from even higher than just the surface. All the way from Heaven! And... I don't know, it's not really worth getting into. It's stupid."
"There is no yama to be found down here, so nobody is going to judge you."
"...Alright, I guess I could start with why I decided to come here."
Since Rin was offering, Tenshi decided to share a mostly abridged recount of relevant events. From her initial exile from Bhava-Agra and the bitterness that resulted from it, to how she finally made peace with finding her own way, only to then be told that she was suddenly allowed to return.
The confusion and uncertainty that followed was frustrating enough for Tenshi to deal with, but the fact that she did such a poor job of hiding it from the people she cared, was the most humiliating part of this whole situation. …Other than apparently being found passed out at the bottom of a ditch by some cat.
"Wow. That's quite the story." Rin exclaimed, genuinely interested. If this was all a delusion cooked up from someone in their last moments, it was a very elaborate one. "I think I get the gist."
"You do? I don't know how much sense any of that really made."
"No, no, I get it. You decided today you wouldn't be chained down by other people's expectations, right? But when you heard those people might accept you again, you felt happy about it. But feeling that way… it's like you're betraying your own decisions."
"...Oh. Yeah, you really nailed it." Tenshi bit her lip, both grateful but also embarrassed that Rin seemed to have gotten a perfect read on her.
"I've listened to the woes of many souls before." Rin said, happy to show off her wealth of experience. "Doesn't just getting it off your chest feel good?"
"A little bit. I wasn't really planning on just airing it all out to anybody, but I guess I'm glad for the chance."
"So then, do you have a better idea of where your grudge comes from?"
"My grudge? If you mean what's bothering me, I already knew. I want to commit to my own decisions, and live for myself first and foremost, not just follow blindly to what those other, boring celestials think of me! …Though maybe all I've been doing is running away from it all."
"Oh, that's also a sentiment I've seen from plenty of troubled souls before. Lots of folks have felt like they would do anything to get away from their unsatisfying lives. But you know, the biggest and most common regret I see among them, is that they didn't try harder to make the best of what they had. After they were dead, they realised all their problems could have been easily solved if they just faced them head on instead of being stubborn. Isn't that so tragic? It's enough to make you laugh."
"I guess it's a little funny how pathetic it is, if that's what you mean." It sounded too cliche for Tenshi's tastes for her to relate, and yet... "Agh, but what's most pathetic is that it describes me to a tee!"
"It looks as if all that is still troubling you even now."
"It is still troubling me, and it's annoying!" Tenshi slumped further down in the wheelbarrow, rolling her eyes at herself. "I'm not usually like this, you know? I usually just do whatever I think is fun, instead of worrying about stupid stuff like this. I was all set to conquer this entire underworld."
"Oho, is that right?" Rin giggled. She thought about how if a shinigami were to have found this soul first, their overinflated ego would certainly have led them straight to somewhere more unpleasant than where Rin was now taking them. "Well then, you'll be glad to know that very soon, you won't have any troubles whatsoever. You'll be someplace where you can have all the fun you could want."
"You are talking about the capital, right? …There's something weird about you, even for a youkai."
Something about the way Rin said that was making Tenshi uneasy. It must have set off something to Tenshi's instincts, since she felt a drop of sweat along her face.
A moment later, however, Tenshi realised that her sweating was purely because of the temperature. "...Wait, is it getting warmer all of a sudden? A lot warmer?"
"That's because we're getting close to your destination."
"What destination? And this is way too hot! I'm burning up here!" Even as numb as she was, Tenshi could already feel the air around them was getting unpleasantly warm, to the point of being sweltering. "How are you not feeling this heat?!"
"I'm pretty used to it, and I'm sure you will too in no time!" Rin happily assured a confused Tenshi, before she stopped the wheelbarrow near the edge of a cliff.
"Eh? What are you-" Tenshi only needed to lift her head up slightly in order to see the scenery ahead of the cliff, which was nothing but a vast river of pure fire. "Huh?!"
"It's not as scary as it looks!" Rin said in a sing-song tone that wasn't the least bit comforting. "Once your corpse is burned away by the blazing fires below, only your soul will be left as a vengeful spirit, and then you can have an eternity's worth of fun without any more troubling thoughts."
"Wait, wait, wait-" Tenshi then felt Rin begin to tilt the wheelbarrow forward, giving her an even better view of the pool of hellfire that this kasha was going to drop her in. "Wait! I told you I'm not dead!"
"Miss, I really think it's about time you stop kidding yourself," Rin shook her head in mock disappointment. "And face the facts. Oh, and have a nice dip while you're at it!"
"Hey, don't you dare-!" Tenshi started to yell just as Rin tipped the wheelbarrow nearly to a perfect ninety degrees.
However, through an act of pure will, Tenshi forced her limbs to work then and there. Her hands gripped the edges of the wheelbarrow on either side of her, and held on with an iron grip before Rin could toss over the cliff.
"Stop it! If this is a prank, it's not funny!" Tenshi pressed the heels of her feet against the edges of the wheelbarrow as well.
"Hey?! Let go!" Rin shook the wheelbarrow, but Tenshi kept holding on for dear life.
"I'm not a corpse! I'm a celestial! A living, breathing celestial, do you understand!?"
"You're being really clingy right now, you know that?!" Rin grumbled, and put more strength into her shaking. Gripping onto the handles tightly, she lifted the wheelbarrow off the floor several times, trying to flip Tenshi off like an egg off a frying pan.
"Of course I am!" Tenshi shouted back while being violently rocked through the air. "You're trying to drop me into hell!"
"We're already in hell! Now quit stalling and take a nice dip!"
Slamming the wheelbarrow back to the ground, Rin went for trying to directly pry Tenshi off with her bare hands, pushing and pulling her by the shoulders. "No! I won't!"
"It's no good to cling to things that don't matter anymore, Miss!" Rin said with barely-veiled irritation in her cheery voice. "Time to throw all your worries about 'heaven' or whatever away!"
"They're not things that don't matter! They matter to me!" Tenshi angrily snapped back, tensing her body as hard as she could. Unfortunately, Tenshi's footing against the surface came loose, and just like that, Rin was halfway towards pulling her out of the wheelbarrow. "Aah!"
"Almost there!" Rin shouted through gritted teeth. Then one of Tenshi's hands came loose, and it flailed limply to one side.
"No! No, no, no, no, stop it you evil cat!" Tenshi's grip strength over the edge of the wheelbarrow failed her bit by bit, and her other arm was wildly flailing for any leverage whatsoever. "Stop it!"
"Just go already! And everything will be-" Rin began to say, before Tenshi's hand suddenly caught onto the front of her dress, clinging to the fabric shockingly tight. "...Huh?"
"I said stop !" Tenshi yelled out, and she ended up swinging her arm in one big, panic-induced burst of strength.
In that single single motion, she ended up throwing Rin over her head.
" Huh ?" Rin could only blink in stunned disbelief upon suddenly being chucked into the air, over the cliff and straight down into the river of fire below.
"Ah." Tenshi only realised what she had just done by reflex a second later, which was about the time she heard a strange, splashing sound from far below.
After taking a second for the adrenaline wore off, Tenshi slowly picked herself up from the wheelbarrow and lowered her feet onto the solid rock next to it. Her footing was unsteady at first, but she found enough balance where she believed she could walk the way back without issue.
Just before Tenshi set off, she heard a scream from far below. It was not, however, a pained scream of a tortured soul as one might have expected, but sounded closer to really distressed whining.
"Waaah! My dress is all ruined! Ah, my braids too…!" A familiar cat's voice shouted from below, in-between whining loudly. "Hey, you up there! You're not allowed to call me 'Orin' anymore…!"
...Rather than respond to that, Tenshi decided to simply move away from the lake of fire as fast as possible, and proceeded to make her way back to the capital.
"Ah… I can feel months worth of stress just leaving my body in an instant." Iku shivered in satisfaction, feeling all her tension seep away thanks to the hot springs' waters.
"Hmm, I guess it's alright." Beside her was Shion, the water also up to her shoulders, and her hair bundled up at the top of her head. She sipped on a cup of sake, but didn't look particularly pleased with the taste.
"What is it?" Iku asked, noticing Shion's dejected demeanour. "Are all the vengeful spirits bringing down your mood?"
"No, it's not that." Frankly, the fact that vengeful spirits liked to fill these springs was a blessing in Shion's eyes, because it meant that it marked the prices down considerably. Not that it mattered this time, since her entry today was free. "Oh, speaking of, here comes another one towards you."
"Hm?" Iku looked to her right, and among the thick steam, she spotted a vengeful spirit coalescing into solid form and stumbling awkwardly towards her direction.
"Want me to get it?" Shion offered. The vengeful spirits around this area like to pile up around the area and harass the guests, making it the worst hot springs in town according to reviews. Fortunately for Shion, it didn't take much effort to swat them away with her power.
"No, I got this one." In response, Iku casually raised a finger towards the sky, and a lightning bolt came down and struck the spirit head-on, zapping it out of existence.
Shion watched without blinking, but she couldn't help but raise a question. "...Hey, is it really safe to bring down lightning when we're in a pool of water?"
"Do you know what the odds of being struck by lightning are? They say it's one in a million. They don't increase just because you're in a hot spring."
"Hey, don't bring up the odds around me! My bad luck can be pretty devastating!" Now that the odds were brought up, Shion reflexively shielded her head with her hands, looking out for any stray lightning.
"I was joking, anyway. My lightning doesn't hit anyone by mistake." Iku said with a proud smile. "So if the spirits aren't what's getting you down… Are you thinking about Eldest Daughter?"
"You could tell?" Shion sank a little lower into the water. "Yes, I am."
"You were thinking you'd enjoy this hot spring more if she were here, huh?"
"A little bit, yeah. Nothing against you. I just wonder if she's upset at me right now."
It had been a while since either of them had seen Tenshi, but Iku had thus far chalked it up to Tenshi being busy with bothering more of the locals. "You don't think she'd really be upset because of your plan earlier?"
"More because it didn't work! I was so sure my ability, only good for bringing disaster, would be the one thing that could help her this time."
"But can you really be so certain she would have appreciated that? Having her natural fortune as a celestial defeated like that… I don't think her pride would have allowed it."
"But you see, I've seen firsthand just how much that stuff has upset Lady Celestial! It's how I first met her. She was so torn up about being kicked out of Heaven, that she wanted to destroy the whole world! I don't think she's gotten over it fully since then, either…"
"And yet, she wasn't happy when I told her she was free to come back to Bhava-Agra for our banquet. Even after all this time, it's hard for me to read her mood." Now it was Iku's turn to sigh. "...I really need to thank you again, for taking care of the Eldest Daughter all this time. I know she can sometimes be difficult to deal with."
"Oh, no way, she's the one taking care of me a lot of the time. Hanging out with her has never been difficult!"
"Maybe you just get along better with her than I do, then." Iku smirked, honestly glad that Tenshi had people she was this close to in Gensokyo, even if it made her just the slightest bit wistful.
"I dunno about that. You two go a long way back, right? So you have your own way of getting along. At least, that's the sense I get."
"You have a good point. For as many times as we've clashed, I feel like we usually become closer for it." For all the stress Tenshi has caused Iku in the past, Iku couldn't help but at least look back at some of those instances with a fond smile. "I do still wonder how serious she is about never returning to Bhava-Agra."
"Lady Celestial sometimes changes her mind a lot about things, so it's hard to say. But I think it'd be a shame if she stayed away from her family and her home forever. She'd start to feel sad about it eventually, right?"
"I really couldn't say." Iku shook her head, before closing her eyes and falling into a contemplative silence, hoping the tension-relieving waters could also provide some clarity for her mind as well.
"Neither could I." Shion went similarly quiet. At least until she noticed something moving in the corner of her eye. "Oh, is that another one?"
"Hm?" Iku peeked one eye open towards a distant silhouette approaching them among the steam from outside the hot spring. Too relaxed to want to adjust her position, she once again raised a finger lazily into the air. "I got this one."
Lightning came down once more, striking its target head on…
"Gyaaaah!?" …And drawing out a high-pitched screech that was clearly not from a vengeful spirit, but from a familiar celestial.
"Wha- Eldest Daughter?!" Iku instantly turned around, and right outside their spring was one charred Tenshi lying face down on the ground.
"Lady Celestial!" Shion gasped upon realising as well. "Are you okay?!"
"I-I'm… f-f-fine…!" Tenshi sputtered out, shaking off the shock before slowly pushing herself up so she could glare at Iku. "What the hell was that for?!"
"I'm so sorry, Eldest Daughter! I thought you were a vengeful spirit! You really should have said something instead of quietly sneaking around…"
"What, so it's my fault?!" Somehow, the apology didn't sound all that genuine to Tenshi. "I've been looking for the both of you, and this is where you've been?"
"You were?" A surprised Shion asked. "After Yuugi handed me that free pass for two to the hot spring, I went looking for you, but I didn't find you anywhere."
"And so Miss Shion offered your spot to me, which I'm grateful for." Iku said to Tenshi, before quickly adding. "Before you ask, it's too late for us to switch."
"Are you even sorry for electrocuting me just now?!"
"Of course I am." Iku bluntly said. "But this and that are different things."
"Where have you been, anyway?" Shion asked.
"Well, I got sidetracked by a cat…"
"A cat?" The both of them asked in confusion.
"It was a whole thing, doesn't matter now." Tenshi got to her feet, dusting off the parts of her clothes that were still smouldering, before speaking again. "Iku, I want to head back to Bhava-Agra."
"Huh?! Really?" Iku couldn't help but exclaim in much greater surprise than she wanted to show. "So you'll be joining the rest of your clan after all-
"Don't get the wrong idea! It's not as if I've decided I'm going to attend that stupid banquet." Tenshi quickly followed up. "But if I'm going to make any decision about it, I should at least go see for myself what's going on, as opposed to trying to avoid it."
"It's still such a contrast from what you were saying earlier. Why the change of heart?"
"What, I can't change my mind if I feel like it?" Tenshi argued, but then felt she ought to give at least a little more context for her decision. "I was just thinking that… none of my my hang-ups right now should be a big deal for me, and I should just face them head on instead of being stubborn about it."
"That's surprisingly level-headed of you, Eldest Daughter." Iku said with a smile, though it only elicited another huff from Tenshi.
"Hmph. If I decide that the banquet they're holding is worthy of my presence, I might choose to stick around long enough to take part. If it's not though, I'm making sure they know as such, and that they'll have to try harder if they want me back!"
"Of course, only the best for the Eldest Daughter." Iku said, her smile cracking into a knowing smirk. "Alright then. I'll accompany you on the way back, in case you've forgotten the way."
"If only I could forget sometimes…" After that, Tensh turned her gaze to Shion. "...And Shion, you don't have to worry about me, okay?"
"I can't help it if I think you're in trouble." Shion frowned. "I know I couldn't help today, but I hope you don't feel like you can't share your troubles with me."
"I don't feel that way. If anything, I'm happy you cared so much." Tenshi said, flashing a grateful smile. "You've helped me plenty, even if you don't realise it. But right now, I just have to head back to Bhava-Agra, and give them a piece of my mind. Then right afterwards, we'll get back to trying to conquer the world, okay?"
"Ehehe… Now I know why I was wrong before."
"What do you mean?"
"There's no way I could ever bring Lady Celestial to ruin with my ability, because being troubled by things like that wouldn't suit you at all. The way you are right now, always moving forward and declaring the whole world to be yours, this is definitely when you shine the most!"
"Now when am I ever not shining?" Tenshi smirked, speaking coolly even with the grateful warmth in her chest.
"So then," Iku spoke. "Did you want to leave for Bhava-Agra right away?"
"I was thinking… maybe next morning." Though she didn't want to admit it, the combination of events has made Tenshi feel more exhausted than she can ever recall. "It's been a long day. Or night. Who can even tell down here?"
"Excellent idea. We could all do with a bit of rest, I think." Iku nodded in agreement.
"Oh, Lady Celestial, you should join us in the hot spring." Shion eagerly said. "You'll have to pay for your entry since we used the free pass, but it's totally worth it as long as you don't mind the occasional vengeful spirit!"
"Ah, thing is…" Tenshi looked down at the water, and all the surrounding hot steam. She felt a drop of sweat rolling down her neck. "...I'm not really in the mood for a warm dip, to be honest. I'm going to take a nap at the inn."
"Oh, okay then-"
Before waiting for a reply, Tenshi turned around and jogged elsewhere to book a room at the nearest inn.
"...Say, do you think, just maybe-" Shion began to ask. Even she could tell what an obvious lie that was coming from Tenshi just now. "...that Lady Celestial is scared of water?"
"I've never seen her like that before. You might just be onto something." Iku answered, stroking her chin as she deeply contemplated this possible revelation. "Even now, I keep learning new things about her…"
