Dear Akyuu,

I'm alive, yes. The tree completely missed the bedroom, but it did flatten the house in general.

I'm safe, yes. I'm currently writing in what remains of the tea room and I can see the blustery sky through the rafters. The view's quite pretty.

First I'd like to thank you sincerely. I've only just realized that the man who came over that first evening was a Hieda branch member; now I'm eating your food and wearing your clothes, after a fashion. I realize I'm sounding like Reisen, but I could never impose further. Please, thank him for me as well. I'll come down to the village when I've given up.

The lesson for today: Discipline.

Discipline is using the right tools to correct the wayward.

My father had a lot to say about discipline, but his content's highly technical. People have gotten the wrong idea the few times I've shown his work. My advice is to observe your student: what does she respond to? Physical fear, guilt, and shame are the three axes. If a student is still recalcitrant after one, try degrees of the other two.

This concludes my lessons. If you so wanted, you could stop reading this letter now, and I would completely understand. Those three maxims are now my sole inheritance, other than my father's journal. I hope they have impressed you with their practicality.

Still, you asked an interesting and difficult question, and a great part of this letter will be devoted to answering it. "How did it feel to cross over?" Well, Akyuu, it felt very ordinary and then very terrifying, all at once. All crossing-over tales end this way, don't they? The tengu in Tales of the Handcart Priest, one and all, conspired to tempt the priest with visions of hell, and were about to show him the pure land when they were quelled. I had no such luck.

Ironically, the trouble began with discipline. You'd expect that after everything I told Reisen, and everything she told back, she'd deign placing just a small bit of respect on my shoulders. Instead, here's a few choice quotes from the weeks after:

"Lady Miyake, Ki doesn't exist. Anyway, I think Kampo does well without it. And so I didn't add the Ki ingredients. The preparations did fine, I think."

"Lady Miyake, I thought you should know, I didn't add the aconite into the Shigyakuto preparation. Aconite poisons the stomach, so I don't think you can say the herb is 'hot'. Poison feels cold to me. I should know, I've been poisoned before."

"I had a friend prepare me some lily-of-the-valley extract. I did some study, and I think it would strengthen our Saiko-keishi-kankyoto preparation. Kampo-wise I'm not sure if it's empty or full, hot or cold. Doesn't it only matter afterwards, Lady Miyake? As long as it's effective?"

Reisen would laugh off these comments in the tea room sessions. She wouldn't apologize, nor even talk about the comments—she just sniggered and changed the topic. When I cornered her, she'd smile guiltily and say, "Aren't we friends now, Lady Miyake?" or "Yes, Lady Miyake, I'll go along next time." Afterwards Reisen would find some new principle of Kampo to casually violate. It wasn't that she was defiant per se, since she corrected her mistakes after being told off. Only, she had begun to get little too blasé, too casual, with Kampo. And with me.

One time, though, she went too far. I'd been insisting on the existence of Ki, again. Reisen had chosen to accept Ki "for here", but said that it was only a substitute for ignorance in Gensokyo. Her exact words had been, "It's fine for here, but our science is a lot more advanced. It'd be impossible for humans to understand, though, so maybe we'll talk as if Ki exists. Really, you're sounding like your father."

I saw red. It was the implication, I think, that my father was both ignorant and stubborn. I had been peeling something or another, maybe an apple, but before I knew it I had physically disciplined her.

Reisen was fast, but my lesson had the advantage of surprise. Knife extended—whistling—sudden impact. She had raised both her arms in hasty defense thinking I was making for her face: she was mistaken, as always. Afterwards, I was so surprised to find that I had drawn blood that it took me moments to realize that Reisen had disappeared.

She hadn't moved far; I could feel her presence in the room (ironically, due to her Ki), but she had disappeared from sight. I could hear her drawing shallow breaths, wincing a little. I grabbed the space where her arm had been and found the edge of her blazer. I tugged: she resisted, invisibly. The whole scene was dreamlike, hazy, and I had to say something to break the trance.

"I'm sorry, Reisen, but you ought to be too."

She appeared again, quite suddenly. Sprawled on the floor, she had looked embarrassed or disgusted, cradling her left arm and guarding a tense distance. I saw that the knife had cut an angry red slash on the back of her left wrist. Her ears were swiveling, swiveling.

Despite everything I felt a morbid curiosity well within—what else could she do?

"Why did you do that? Why not just shout at me?"

I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. It came out in this pathetic, breaking mewl.

"I miss my father very much, now, don't you spite him."

What was Reisen's expression then? I've turned it over and over in my mind. I supposed at first that it had been pity mixed with disgust, which was appropriate. Some time after, I decided that it had been a dawning empathy. Now, however, I'm sure that the empathy was false; she hadn't understood anything about me—she had only been replaying one of her own memories, thinking that she understood.

"I'm sorry, Lady Miyake. Please drop the knife."

I did so. With a surprising swiftness Reisen had clutched the knife and thrown it away. I felt my arm being grasped, tightly, and I let myself be dragged to the tea room. When the situation called for it, Reisen could turn surprisingly persuasive.

"Really? Please, Lady Miyake, help me. You're the expert."

Reisen sighed and rested her cut arm on the table. Numbly I examined the wound, which was surprisingly deep and oozing blood. Wound treatment in Kampo is simple, uncontroversial. I admit that treating her had been comforting, almost. First, I cleansed her wound using a soapy solution made from crushed Primrose flowers and Ginseng. It stings, a lot, but Reisen bore the pain admirably.

"Um, Lady Miyake, you're not also putting poison into me, right?"

It was a joke. I laughed, a little. Next, I sprinkled jin bu huan powder on her wrist to stop the bleeding and swelling. Reisen had flexed her fingers, noted that it tickled. As I bandaged her wrist, I told her about how samurai would treat horrific wounds with the same powder, how it was hot and represented 'fire'. Reisen had nodded along.

Last, I gave her fingers a squeeze. Despite everything, she had squeezed back, then gave me a confused, worried smile.

"You're difficult. Sometimes, I can't tell when you're sincere." After a pause, Reisen continued with odd, determined emotion. "You're sick with something. Your father passed on and you haven't, and it's making you sick."

I told her a very short version of the last four years. You're not missing anything, Akyuu: it was four very similar variations on the same difficult year.

"Um, I thought that only happened in poems and stories. I suppose that it can't be helped. Please leave it to me."

You know, printed like that, Reisen's statement sounds callous, but I swear at the time she had said it a bit more artfully, more sadly. I had left things to her, of course.

The emergency treatment, as she called it, turned out to be far more fantastic than I'd anticipated. In your Chronicles, you wrote that Reisen has the ability to 'manipulate insanity' and that staring into her eyes would cause a person to go mad. Was that a sort of editorial discretion on your part? She could do (and did) far, far more than that.

Our first session, for example, a week after I slashed her hand. This must've been, oh, second third of Minazuki. In this very tea room, dusk-dimmed, she had held tightly to both my hands and told me matter-of-factly that she would induce a hallucination of a field of flowers. All I had to do was stare into her eyes.

"I'm just testing things out," she said, by way of reassurance. "I'm holding your hands if you fall over. Also, if you want to stop for any reason, shout 'Luna'. Or just panic, I'll hear you."

I had agreed, more out of youkai-curiosity than anything. I sensed no guile coming from her; if anything, she had seemed to be the more nervous of us. Her fingers felt clammy. I saw the scar on her left hand and wondered if youkai healed faster.

"Whenever you're ready, look into my eyes. And not a word of this to my master. I'm only doing this to cure your sickness."

I remember taking a deep, gulping breath, then looking into her eyes. To my surprise, they were a deep, piercing red—for an instant, the color had filled my entire vision. Looking into them had felt like drowning. The floor tumbled crazily from under me, a brief falling sensation, and then my feet found sure footing.

My gaze tracked upwards from my feet, and found that the ground curved impossibly upwards, a mind-bending hill covered in lilies of every description. To my left, a sea of gold-band lilies nodding to a spectral breeze, as far as the eye cared to see: to my right, a gentle gully awash in tiger lilies, speckled impossibly purple, blue, white, and orange. Light shone from somewhere high, though I could see no sun. Truth: I had struggled to draw breath. Usually a view so splendorous reveals itself slowly, from a distance, then up close, but this was all at once and from every direction. I was a minute stranger in a world of lilies. It was an assault—beautiful, but an assault.

I fell backwards, but felt Reisen's hands grasp me surely. I could still feel her sweat, even though her hands weren't there.

"Ah, you're a faller." I felt Reisen's voice, echoing inside my head. "You'd make for an easy foe, you know that? Um, so do you feel any nausea? Lack of balance?"

I felt both those things, but I didn't want to give up so easily. I shook my head and took an unsteady step forward. The lilies parted, wobbly.

"No, no, I can see you from here, Lady Miyake. No politesse here, no pretending please. Luna?"

Luna, I thought. Instantly the landscape dissolved, retreating up a vanishingly distant point, and gradually resolved itself into the darkening tea room. First the altar, then the phonograph, window, shelf, table, Reisen. The red glare had disappeared, her eyes again dark brown in the evening gloom. Her determined stare relaxed and she let go of my hands. Scrunching her eyes tight, she had breathed out.

"Not a word of this, Lady Miyake. Promise. Promise?"

I had quickly and gratefully sworn myself to secrecy. I would've been insane to let such an ability go to waste. I had the clearest vision of reunion, like coming home after a long day: I'd find his shoes in the hall, catch the musky smell of fresh roots, and there, in the tea room, eyes shut in pensive attention, I would find my father. My chest nearly collapsed for pining. A little more, I thought, a little more; it took every ounce of my being to not push Reisen for an immediate reunion.

The very next day, Reisen confessed that she'd had second thoughts.

"I don't think meeting your father again would cure your illness, Lady Miyake. He wouldn't be your father, remember? He'd be an illusion that I created."

I was livid and made no attempt to hide it. I accused her of breaking her promise (as if we had made a deal beforehand), assured her that I had it all thought out (as if I was capable of thought beyond simple longing). Please try to understand, Akyuu. I had only wanted him for a few moments. Listen to his voice again - properly say goodbye - leave; the simplest thing for a youkai of her ability.

In my mind I have often signposted this as the point of no return, but I leave judgement open for you. Reisen had caved, agreed to my absurd request, as I knew she would. Fellow-sufferers recognize one another, after all: in expressing her second thoughts she hadn't been looking for restraint, but for license. True, I'd been hungry for my father's presence, but Reisen had felt her own morbid pull. Long before I handed her my father's journal, she had already decided to judge him, judge me, cast herself as someone above us all. And I had let her.

My hands have frozen. I shall write more in the morning, Akyuu, I promise. This letter has enough self-pity as it stands.

Your friend,
Chiyoko Miyake.

A/N: Glossary of terms

Shigyakuto: Kampo preparation for fatigue, aversion to cold, cold limbs, coughs, abdominal pain. Made from aconite, licorice roots, and dried ginger.

Saiko-keishi-kankyoto: Kampo preparation for depression, insomnia, anxiety, night chills.

Hot, cold, full, empty: Kampo patterns used to reach a diagnosis and match a set of symptoms with its preparation. They are: yin-yang, fullness-emptiness, cold-heat, six degrees of illness acuity, and the trifecta of ki-blood-fluid. So for example, a 'deficiency of the liver' along with a 'coldness around the spine' would suggest the symptom set of 'Rikkunshito-sho' and be treated with a preparation of Rikkunshito.