Author's note: I write for the sake of writing, so any reviews is really a nice bonus to me. Ze!
""""""
"So, this is the guy that Yuyuko-san wants to meet, ze?"
"Pretty much so, Marisa, but I doubt he's the guy."
"No way I could mistake 'im, trust me."
I could only watch blankly, utterly ignored by three girls (one in a Shinto Shrine Maiden outfit, another in a very witch-like getup with a black-and-yellow schema) who're conducting their own debate about me in what I think I understood as Japanese, and decided to take a good look at the surroundings while the fracas continued.
It was spring in Japan, so the cool weather and the cherry blossoms so famous outside of Japan also appeared in this particular Shrine, in full force no doubt. The sky was a treat to look at; pristine blue, with a tinge of white to it. It was a truly fantastic place to soak in the sights of, and I wondered why in heavens hadn't this place become a tourist attraction or something.
"That said, he's been outside here for this long. I wonder why Yuyuko specifically called for this young man at this point of time."
"No point talking so much. Look, our guest has been left hanging all on his own," chirped Suika. "How'd you like the place, Konpaku?"
"I said my name is Pasonia S—"
"Fine, fine, whatever. Marisa, you read so much, surely you know the English language?"
"What, the private tongue of the Scarlet Devils?" The girl in the witch costume blurted. "Of course I do. Otherwise Patchouli wouldn't so much as give a second look at me."
The witch came over to me, and shook my hand.
"My name is Marisa Kirisame, human, magician. The stupid shrine maiden over there is Hakurei Reimu, but we all just call her 'red-white.'"
I can totally tell why. Red-white indeed, but I can't afford to laugh lest I get screwed over by my hosts, so I just politely nodded in the maiden's direction while she scowled at the witch.
"So, what happens now? I mean, a guy with near zero knowledge on the tongue, that'll make it hard for him to even talk to Yuyuko, ze. We all know her old and hard-to-understand style of speech and language."
"Well, even so we can't just leave this boy alone and stuff since we all took the trouble to bring him in from the outside world. We should probably make our way to Eientei for this."
"Eientei? Why that god-forsaken rabbit palace of everywhere you can think of, Suika?"
"Well, I hear the pharmacist there treats anything. Including language problems, maybe?"
"That's a tad far-fetched, but Miss Yagokoro is just a human from the Rabbits' Palace anyway. I don't perceive a problem with that which you can't settle with a few to her face, ze."
" Uh, Mister Keros?"
"Yes, hornie? I was thinking you'd totally forgotten my existence."
"'Hornie' is not my name. It's Ibuki Suika, just call me Suika."
"Yea, whatever, Miss Ibuki. What is it?"
"How about I show you around the place? We should first go to a place you're familiar with."
"May I know why I had be singled out for this particular suggestion?"
"You'll find out when we get there. Reimu, where's the bento boxes? We're really famished."
The shrine maiden hastily rushed towards the both of us with two bags of something.
"These should do for the trip. I hope we're doing this right for the sake of Youmu."
Youmu… it must be a name. The name struck a really deep chord within me, as though goosebumps rose at the very thought of the word. I was sure I'd heard of that name somewhere before, a long time ago.
…
That was when I realized one thing that I hadn't been alert to. Normally, even as a baby or toddler one would retain some memories of parents, or even childhood guardians; for me, oddly enough my life only 'began' at around age six, which was a memory of eating vanilla ice cream with my first guardians; a pair of elderly folk, the Rodriguez family, they died when I was around nine or ten.
So what happened before that? This question popped up before when I was in Grade Eight (I dropped out a year after because I'd wanted to live on my own, but I still took night classes to make up for it), but back then it was just one of many random thoughts that I later dismissed as adolescent bullshit today.
"What you dreamin' about? The horse carriage's here. We're both gonna eat our lunches in there."
"Huh." The whole horse carriage thing made me realize that this world is actually kinda backwards, and I began to wonder if it was actually possible to survive in this world without all the techie shmuck we'd all been so used to.
And then…
"Hey, uhh, where's the forks and spoon?" I blurted, to which all three of them suddenly burst into rapturous laughter which I don't understand anything about.
""""""
"Here we are at Kourindou," announced Suika. "I am sure the shop owner would love to meet you. Rinnosuke, dammit! Where are you?"
"…"
The shop itself, viewed from the street, was pretty run-down, and there're traces of burn marks and sword cuts all over the shop. Given this state of affairs, certainly there must've been many a fight in this shop, and given that walking disasters like the girl right beside me must exist by the droves, it certainly wouldn't be a surprise at all. What does disturb me is why this "shop owner" doesn't ever bother to renovate his own shop.
"I'm busy. No business for the day."
"Aww, shut it! Something of yours must be broken or something!"
What a bloody ruckus.
"I said NO BUSINESS FOR THE DAY, SUIKA---"
"Hi," she blurted, casually walking right into the establishment amidst the shop owner's protests. "I brought you a person you might want to know. Pasonia, this is Morichiya Rinnosuke, shop owner of Kourindou."
The shop owner came out of the back of his shop, and then stared coldly at us. I took a look at his clothing, and concluded that this world is really that much more archaic than I initially thought it was, what with his something-like-a-dress getup and his old-style, humongous spectacles from last century. But the shop's displays are quite fantastic, it almost seemed like I walked right into a home appliances shop or something, given the stuff he displays all over. Only the odd books – which I swore were either moving, or winking at me – were any sign of this store's roots in this world.
"Morichika Rinnosuke," corrected the shop owner. "Hajimemashite."
"Hajime… what?"
"Oh, umm, sorry, he hasn't really been living in the immediate outside world called Nihon, that's why he doesn't know the language very well. It's the same tongue as is spoken in the Scarlet household."
"That vampire girl? Augh, I hate her, Suika, you know, the other day her maid Sakuya just walked in and said 'hey can I get a couple of perfume bottles' and without paying me she took off with the bottles do you know how long it took for me to procure the bottles from Yukari now I have to go replace it I am already very poor why are you guys doing this to me is this guy going to---"
"Shut up," Suika butted in with a slap on Rinnosuke's face.
"Ouch, what the hell Suika?"
"You speak too fast. You're scaring my friend."
Friend, huh, Suika? Hum, it's not like I'd do myself any favor not being her friend. That said, I do agree that he speaks so fast in Japanese it's almost unreal, though I very much disagree that I'm terrified.
"Whatever. Why'd you bring him here?"
"Well, I'm doing you a favor here. You've been fixing with that music player thing for ages, haven't you?"
"Well, yea, I've been trying to turn it on but I couldn't get it to work. What a pain…"
I took the music player from his hands, guessing from what he was saying to Suika. It was a simple Creative MP3 player device with about three hours of music left in it, and by the looks of it, he did manage to turn it on, all it's lacking is a suitable pair of earphones.
"Sir, do you have other items?"
"What'd he ask for?"
"He asked if you got other items?"
"Why'd you need them for? You want to steal from me?"
"I don't steal," I retorted, noting the defensive stance he suddenly started, "but you're totally getting the use of this item wrong. You need a pair of earphones."
"Earphones? Uhh… oh, yea, I have some, if these are the right stuff."
He disappeared to the back of the store; I'd assume he knew what to look for.
"Yukari told me some stuff about this guy Rinnosuke some time ago when I went over to her residence," blurted Suika.
"What exactly?"
"He knows the name of outside world stuffs just by taking one look. Though he hardly uses them."
"Not surprising."
"I should tell you that he has never, ever stepped out of Gensokyo before."
"What, what? You're not shittin' me?" How can anyone know the use of something without ever using it before?
" I don't think he could withstand the border entrance like we did earlier."
"Don't remind me of the nightmare, little girl. I puke every time I think of it," I replied matter-of-factly.
"Ugh, yer right there old man. Here he comes."
"I found something, does this work?"
I almost wanted to kill Rinnosuke for this; he's telling me he "found something" which was like, one of the more high-end earphones out there that you can bring around and show off with. In fact, it's one of those earphones I've been scouring the shops for before I came here, god dammit.
"Where the hell did you get this Sennheiser shtick?"
"Sennheiser? What is a Sennheiser?"
I rephrased that, realizing that the brands I just mentioned, mentally or otherwise, are totally alien concepts to people in this world. "I mean, who sold you these earphones?"
Rinnosuke proceeded to ramble on in Japanese, which caused him to get a slap on the head yet again.
"Sakuya, an acquaintance of ours, got this for him. Says she went on a shopping trip in a downtown area of the outside world---"
Akihabara, any time of the year…
"…and when she got back she just took this to the store, sold him this for a thousand bucks."
"Talk about total fleecing," I blurted. "This thing doesn't cost more than four hundred dollars in the outside world, that's for sure."
Suika promptly translated for Rinnosuke, and Rinnosuke promptly raged and flung some stuff around the shop. I heard a vase smash; that was such a pity, I bet he didn't know it was a Ming-era vase (or at least the patterns on it did give that vibe, but I wasn't a vase connoisseur or anything to know if that shit was really a Ming vase or a made-in-China duplicate). Not wanting to correct him, I plugged the earphones into the port and passed it over to the shop owner.
"Wh… whoa! Whoa! WHOA! The stuff here, this music… it definitely rivals the Prismrivers', and is not even half as dangerous!"
"Told you. He's happy now. We'll need him on our side so he'll 'tell us when Miss Yagokoro's messenger would visit here', that's what red-white said."
"Miss Yagokoro? Who might that be?"
"Eirin Yagokoro of Eientei, a lady whom we call the Rabbits' Palace Miracle Healer. She apparently comes from the Moon.
"The Moon? But… there's nothing on it, as far as the outside world is concerned."
"There isn't? Well, what we do know about the Moon from Eientei's recent exposition, was that they're that far beyond us in this thing called 'technology', even beyond the outside world's."
"You've got to be pulling my legs. If we're advanced enough to have nukes, they'd have death cannons to kill entire planets!"
Why the heck am I thinking of deadly weapons right now, though?
"I'm not. When we get to Eientei, we'll find out."
""""""
"Welcome back, ze!"
The first to greet us back at the shrine as the sun began to set, was the same witch girl from before. Marisa Kirisame, if memory serves me right.
"Thanks for the welcome," I blurted, noting that there was a girl nearby with cat ears, and a box full of dolls right beside her. "Is anything the matter? There seems to be quite a party here."
"Oh, uh, Yukari and Alice have just arrived."
Yukari, huh, the name sounds familiar for sure.
"Well, if it hasn't struck you by now, it's all thanks to Yukari that we had to suffer the pressure. My horns are going to take a week to straighten back up to the perfect forty-two degrees!"
Mental note to self: Even a horned girl has pride in fashion. Check, check.
""""""
"Hey, Suika, welcome back. I gotta go now."
"Hold it right there, Yakumo!"
"What's the matter?"
"You… why have you totally forgotten to open up the portal? D'you had any idea how tough it was to pass through the Hakurei Border because you forgot to open the damn thing up?"
"Ran! Ran! Is there such a matter today?"
"Uh, yes, madam, I called you in the morning to remind you but you said 'I'm going back to sleep', so I didn't bother anymore."
"Ran! What the hell?" Suika exclaimed so loudly I could hear her even as I was sipping the maiden's tea slowly at the other end of the shrine.
"You know the mistress, Suika-san…"
I could only watch on in clear confusion; I know the two must be talking about this morning's incident, but I hadn't had the heart to step in, for fear that I would end up getting killed if the girl decides to use her strength on any of the household items.
"YUKARI, EAT THIS!"
"Don't wreck my shrine, Suikaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
A tad too late, though it was definitely controlled rage coming from Suika. The chair flew halfway across the room, and given the speed it was impossible to have dodged it. But by some major stroke of masterpiece, I saw the lady Yukari teleport to the other end of the room and towards where I was, the chair flying all the way out of the shrine and breaking into three different pieces.
That was when I realized that the lady was right beside me, and as luck would have it, a second chair came hurtling my way as Yukari teleported elsewhere to safety.
Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-------
"Yuuji, jump, NOW!"
I didn't know where that warning came from, but at that instant I somersaulted upwards, narrowly avoiding the chair by the thread of my hair.
"Whoa!" The rest of the spectators watched on.
"Take your fight out of the shrine, the both of you! You nearly killed our V.I.P. back there!"
Even though I did manage to avoid the chair, the suddenness of my own evasive move threw my balance off, and I could not achieve a proper landing as I lay splat on the shrine flooring, in all fours.
"You all right, Konpaku? I'm sorry the chair flew that way…"
"Next time, aim your bloody chair before you throw! That was far too close!" I blasted as Suika winked at me apologetically.
"So, that's the outsider you've been talking about, girls?"
"Yep, Alice, that's our V.I.P. from the outside world. The name's uhh, crackers?"
"Keros… Pasonia Seltia Keros, or you can just call me Pas. Your name, madame?"
Out of courtesy, the moment I got up from the floor I extended my gesture towards the lady in a blue shirt – white skirt combo.
"What courteousness," giggled the blonde. " I am Alice Margatroid, of Bucharest."
Bucharest, it's a lovely city this time of the year, that I know of because I've been there to fight just recently. "Margatroid, though, it's a pretty obscure name even for a Romanian," I remarked.
"I heard of you from Reimu, but all the while they've been referring to you as 'the last surviving male Konpaku'. I am interested as to---"
"Hold on wait a moment there," I gagged, staring at the other girls who'd stopped whatever they were doing. "Miss Margatroid, you just called me a what?"
"Uh, the 'last surviving male Konpaku'."
Konpaku, Konpaku, Konpaku. Just what the hell does the word 'Konpaku' had to do with me?
"Suika?"
"Yes, Pas?"
"I demand to know why I'm being brought here."
"Well, it's actually pretty simple to talk about the Konpaku family, but a much longer story about why you're now in Gensokyo."
Given Suika's pretty straightforward nature of doing things, I would bet my fighter's instinct on her words. "So tell me more about the Konpaku family."
"Alice, do you have a copy of the Perfect Memento with you, by any chance?" Suika asked.
"Uh, no, I don't usually carry anything other than Shanghai, Hourai, or my grimoire."
"Not me either," Yukari added.
"And what has a Shrine Maiden have anything to do with a book of that volume?"
Anticipating each other's responses, they all said in unison:
"Go to Akyu's!"
""""""
The next day…
The carriage stopped as the horse riders pulled the reins. Suika and I then disembarked the ride and looked on in awe at the Hieda family's residence. It was a sight to behold, really; I've heard of stories about Japanese royal families and their grand Japanese housing and architecture, and I was told that most of what was left of Japan's past is in Edo, but I was sure that they were quite wrong since I saw it in Gensokyo. A tower that oversees all else in the background, the distinctive fan-shaped roofs, and the general grandiose of the whole mansion made it almost a sin to set my foot in it.
"Wait till you get to Hakugyokurou," grinned Suika, as if she was expecting my response. "That's where your other family is."
"'Other' family?"
"I really have no mood to explain too much now to a person as inquisitive as you," she sighed, waving a servant of the household over to ourselves. "Please send word that I, the oni Ibuki Suika, am here to look for the Child of Miare on an important matter on behalf of the Shrine Maiden, and I have with me a guest from outside Gensokyo."
"Will do, Ibuki-sama," answered the servant. "PASS THE WORD DOWN – WE HAVE A GUEST FOR OUR HOLY CHILD!"
"'Holy child'…"
"I swear, Pasonia, your appetite for answers is as big as Yuyuko's appetite for food."
"Who might that be, Suika?"
"We'll get all the answers you need soon enough. Oh, look, the servants are coming this way."
To be continued…