Chapter 4: Epiphanic Moment at an Answer
"Hello, students! Welcome to third period History!" the teacher smiled, gently tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear and writing her name on the blackboard as she spoke, "My name is Kiroku Rikeki, but you may call me Ms. Rikeki or just Ms. Ri, and I will be your current substitute teacher for the week!"
Her work outfit was simple and casual; a simple linen colored sweater, with a blue polka dot dress underneath. She also wore a pair of black glasses and shoes. All in all, she looked rather kind and demure, if somewhat soft spoken at times.
"Well, she looks nice I guess," Eddy muttered silently, "at least she wouldn't get on our case every time we made a slip up."
Edd hummed, "She does look rather lax when it comes to mistakes, but I suppose it's only because she's our substitute teacher."
"Whatever, no matter how nice and peppy teachers are, school is still boring." Eddy said, already leaning his head on his hand in boredom.
"She looks pretty," Ed smiled naively, cheerful as always.
"Now, can anyone tell me what country's history are we learning today?" Kiroku asked. Edd's arm immediately shot into the air, "Mister Crawford."
"Japan, more specifically the primary island of Honshu."
"Excellent!" Kiroku praised, Edd smiled bashfully in pride. "Now, since we're primarily learning about the mythology part of Honshu, and there's quite a few honestly, and it's a rather lax school day, can anyone please give me a prompt and I'll tell you the most similar legend."
This time, Ed's hand shot straight up, shocking and surprising a large handful of the students inside the classroom.
"Hmm, Mister Christensen?"
"Ooh! Ooh! Can you tell us about a cool place in Japan? Where aliens and monsters and cool people live together and everyone does crazy cool things?" the second Ed finishes his rather outlandish prompt, everyone couldn't help but groaned. Typical Ed.
"'A cool place in Japan'... 'Where aliens and monsters and cool people live together'..." Kiroku repeated to herself, tapping her forehead in thought. "Ah! Believe it or not, I actually have a folklore that perfectly fits that description!"
Everyone froze, even Ed.
"The folklore I'm talking about is Gensokyo; the Land of Illusions, the Curiosity of the Eastern World." everyone, including even Eddy, leaned forwards, "Legend has it that Gensokyo dwells somewhere in a region around the Yatsugatake Mountains that lies between the Yamanashi Prefecture and the Nagano Prefecture. Gensokyo is not a pleasant place; it was desolate, and not only desolate, but haunted too. Haunted by what, you might ask? Youkai. Youkai, spirits, demons and monsters lurks at every corner, waiting for the chance to spring upon a human and devour them."
The students all shivered, obviously somewhat unnerved.
"Eventually, it was deemed far too unsafe for humans to wander through, so the locals named it Gensokyo and deserted the location all at once. However, humans who are brave and skilled at the art of youkai extermination still remain there, engage in exorcism and heroic battles against the demons. The on and off battle between human and youkai continued until 1884, where Gensokyo has somehow been sealed off and away from our scientific world. Since then, Gensokyo has been thriving, populated primarily by youkai, animals and humans.
"Many youkais that had still lived in our world has said to migrated to Gensokyo when nowhere else would accept them while others still lived alongside us in secrecy. The number of people who knows about Gensokyo slowly dwindled down, until there was no one else who held the truth, and the legend of Gensokyo disappears into obscurity."
Jack's Notes
FILLER CHAPTER! But also the explanation on how Ed discover's Gensokyo, so there's that.