Reimu and Marisa sat together on the veranda of the Hakurei Shrine, each cupping their mittened hands around a warm cup of tea, their breath puffing in the cold winter air. Marisa flipped her bright pink scarf over her shoulder, and took a sip. The blessedly warm liquid radiated heat throughout her body as it settled in her stomach, pushing the chill out of her fingers and toes, and she sighed with satisfied relief.
They might normally have spent most of the day indoors under the kotatsu in winter temperatures like these, but when you had such a beautiful snowfall on your hands, you couldn't just shut yourself inside all day, right? You had to take advantage of the opportunity. Around them, snow blanketed the shrine in every direction. Through much laborious shoveling, and a bit of cheating with the Mini-Hakkero, Marisa, Reimu, and Aunn had cleared a path to the shrine's gate, and another over the dirt trail to Marisa's house behind the shrine. A few stray snowflakes drifted through the air, but the sky had largely cleared, leaving the sparkling-white tableau in its wake.
Reimu groaned and set her tea down by her side so that she could rub her shoulders. "I'll be stiff for days from all that shoveling," she groused. "Why does something so pretty have to cause so much work?"
"My muscles are killing me too," Marisa said, wincing from a sudden throb in her shoulderblade. "I don't know how Aunn does it." She hadn't so much as complained once. "Guess that's a komainu for you."
Reimu picked up her gohei from behind her, and poked the butt of the tool into the snow, pulling it around to create a pattern. "Look, Marisa, it's you!" she said, laughing with delight. Marisa looked, and saw she'd drawn a stick figure with a comically oversized, lopsided witch hat.
"Feels like it's a bit lacking," Marisa said. She scooped up a snowball and tossed it at Reimu, who deflected it with her gohei, naturally, spraying snow over both of them.
As Reimu bent to retaliate, the air in the center of the shrine square suddenly roiled with dark energy and warped, twisting in on itself.
"What the heck is that?" Marisa said. It looked like the afternoon might not be as peaceful as she'd hoped. She groped for her broom and Mini-Hakkero as Reimu sprang to her feet and faced the distortion, her brow furrowing with concentration.
The distortion erupted, collapsed back on itself, then repeated, faster and faster, before exploding for a final time. It spat out a figure, who hurtled through the air into a snowdrift to the side of the path Marisa and Reimu had cleared. Marisa and Reimu ran towards the distortion, but it snapped out of existence before they could reach it. With nothing else to do, they hurried towards the figure who sat on their rear in the snowdrift, wincing and brushing snow off of their clothes.
The figure stood, and Reimu skidded to a halt, with Marisa alongside her.
For whatever reason, the person spat out by the distortion wore the dress of a maiden of the Hakurei Shrine. In other words, they were dressed exactly like Reimu, minus the coat. They even had a gohei, to boot. The newcomer was a young woman, roughly Marisa's age, she estimated, but Marisa had never seen her before.
"Who are you?" Reimu demanded, leveling her gohei. "And why are you wearing those clothes?"
"Who am I? Hey!" the woman said, as she brushed herself off and rose to her feet. She leveled her own gohei in reply. "Who are you, and what are you doing at my shrine? Are you behind this?"
"Your shrine?" Reimu asked, voice heating up. As Marisa knew from experience, nothing riled Reimu up quicker than unexplained nonsense disrupting a peaceful day. "This is my shrine." She rose a few inches off of the ground, her eyes narrowing. "Explain now, before I make you."
"Look, you surprised us, is all," Marisa said, stepping forward. "We're not lookin' to pick a fight."
"Stop right there!" the strange woman said, brandishing something at Marisa in her other hand. A jolt of recognition electrified Marisa as she saw what the woman held.
"You're using a Mini-Hakkero?" Marisa asked, bewildered. She looked at the one she held in her hand, pointing towards the ground.
"Of course I'm using the Mini-Hakkero," the woman said, sounding equally confused. "I'm the Hakurei shrine maiden, aren't I? Who else would use it?"
Marisa understood each of the individual words the woman had spoken, but taken together, she had absolutely no idea what the heck was going on.
The woman gestured towards the shrine. "I was minding my own business, tidying up around the shrine, when some youkai came out of nowhere, attacked me, and disappeared. You two showed up right after. What's going on here? Are you working with that youkai?"
Reimu drifted back down to the ground, sensing that the woman wasn't about to launch into an attack, and stamped her foot. "I'm telling you, you just showed up at my shrine," she said. 'Why are you dressed like that?"
Something about the situation triggered a memory in Marisa's mind of Sanae excitedly ranting about bizarre Outside World science at one of the flower-viewing parties.
"Reimu, take off your coat," she said.
"What?" Reimu said. She looked at Marisa as though she had lost her mind. "Are you serious?"
"Dead serious," Marisa said, balancing her broom in the crook of one arm so she could undo the top button on Reimu's jacket with her other hand. "C'mon, let's go."
"What are you two doing?" the other woman asked, befuddled.
"Hold on just a sec, you'll see," Marisa said.
Reimu, looking somewhat off-balance, quickly unbuttoned her coat and tossed it to the side, revealing her regular clothes. "There'd better be a point to this," she said.
The other girl started with surprise as she saw what Reimu was wearing.
"Do you two see now?" Marisa asked. "You're both the Hakurei shrine maiden."
"Marisa, could you start making sense, please?" Reimu asked, looking peeved.
"There've been a whole buncha Hakurei shrine maidens, right?" Marisa said. "She's like you, just not from right now. It's like that thing Sanae was talking about, remember? Temporal warpholes, or somethin'? Anyways, it's not important." She looked at the strange maiden. "You're from the past, or the future, you were dealing with some kind of incident, and you ended up here. That's what's going on!"
Both Reimu and the newcomer chewed over the idea, but didn't look entirely convinced.
"Just take a look at her, Reimu," Marisa said. "I bet she's got some kinda curse or something that sent her here."
Reimu squinted at the girl, probably peering at her aura, or something else Marisa wouldn't be able to check without a spell or magical tools.
"Huh," she said after a moment. "Looks like you're right, Marisa."
"What?" the other girl said. "I don't see anything, though."
"Of course you don't. It's on you. If you're a Hakurei shrine maiden, you should know that much. Would you expect to be able to see the back of your own head?"
Yeah, Reimu was starting to slip into her usual curmudgeonly incident-solving mentality, all right.
"Okay, so we just need to break that curse and you can go home!" Marisa said excitedly. Now they were getting somewhere. "I have some stuff that can help with that. But first, we should introduce ourselves. I'm Marisa Kirisame, and this is Reimu. You can probably guess her last name."
"Nice to meet you, I guess! Even if this is really weird!" the other maiden said, smiling. "I'm Mami!"
Marisa found it a bit discomfiting to see somebody dressed like Reimu acting this peppy and cheerful during an incident. The sooner they helped her get back to where she belonged, the better.
But first, Marisa just had to know.
"I know it's not exactly the top priority right now, but where did you get that Mini-Hakkero?" she asked. The curiosity was killing her.
"Uh, I got it the same place I got these clothes, and my gohei," Mami said. "Didn't I already tell you I'm the Hakurei shrine maiden?"
"Well, I'm kinda curious, because I've got one too," Marisa said. She held her own up for Mami to see. "I'm guessin' that means you're from the future, since I haven't heard of any Mini-Hakkeros in Gensokyo before this one. Did somebody make more of 'em?"
"More of them? There's only one," Mami said. She looked more closely at Marisa's Mini-Hakkero, then back at her own. "Hey, what did you say your name was again?" she asked Marisa, her voice curious.
"Her name is Kirisame, Marisa Kirisame," Reimu said, tapping her foot impatiently in the snow. "Marisa, can we work on breaking this curse already so we can get back to relaxing?"
Mami looked Marisa up and down, taking in her hat, broom, and mini-Hakkero. Her face suddenly came alive with excitement.
"Hold on, you're that Kirisame?" Mami said. "No way!"
"I am?" Marisa said, bemused.
"You must be!" Mami said. "Wow, this is so cool! Is the shop here too?" She looked around, and suddenly scampered off in the direction of Marisa's house.
"Hey, hold on a sec!" Marisa said. She and Reimu took off after Mami. "Get back here!" Reimu yelled.
They chased her through the woods towards Marisa's house, footsteps crunching through the snow, then thumping on dirt as they intersected the shoveled trail. After a short run, Mami came to a sudden stop in front of Marisa's house. "Hey, it still has the old sign!" she said, marveling up at the walls. "Wow!"
Marisa and Reimu skidded to a halt on either side of Mami, circling in front of her.
"What are you doing?" Reimu snapped. "Stand still and let us figure out how to send you home."
"Ah, sorry," Mami said. She looked at Marisa again. "It's just that it's exciting to meet you in person!" She looked over at Reimu. "And you too, don't worry!"
"You keep talking like you know who I am," Marisa said. "You mind explaining? I'm a little lost."
Which was one heck of an understatement, honestly.
"Well, yeah!" Mami said. "You're the crazy magician who founded the Hakurei magic shop!" She held up her Mini-Hakkero. "This is your Mini-Hakkero! You two are like my great-great…" She tapped her chin thoughtfully, her voice trailing off. "Like my great-great-great-grandmothers, I think?"
"I'm your what?" Marisa said, feeling faint. Across from her, Reimu suddenly went deathly quiet, her face flushing.
"Aunn told me about you!" Mami continued, seemingly oblivious to the rapid unraveling of Marisa and Reimu's grasp on sanity. "Hold on, do you guys know Aunn by now? Should I not be telling you things?"
"Yes, we know Aunn," Reimu said, recovering her composure somewhat. "She's still hanging around the shrine after that long?"
"Duh," Mami said. "She's a komainu, isn't she?"
"What did Aunn tell you about me?" Marisa said, grasping for a conversational lifeline to cling to.
"Oh, lots of stuff! So many cute stories about you and Reimu." Mami sighed happily. "I've always wished I had somebody to sweep me off my feet the way you did to her…"
Marisa and Reimu were both blushing even more furiously, now.
"You can't have her," Reimu said, holding an arm between Mami and Marisa.
"Ewww, that's not what I meant!" Mami said. "Don't be gross!"
"Hey, did you call it the Hakurei magic shop?" Marisa asked. She'd heard that right, hadn't she?
"That's what everyone calls it!" Mami said. "It's been basically part of the shrine for ages. I run the shop too. The shrine maiden always does."
There was no way her silly little shop had managed to stick around that long - was there? "So you can do my kind of magic on top of all your shrine maiden stuff? That's why you've got the Mini-Hakkero?"
"Of course!" Mami said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"The shrine maidens know magician magic now too?" Reimu asked, sounding bewildered.
"Aunn said it was because the maiden after you grew up around the shop and learned magician stuff from Marisa just like she learned shrine maiden stuff from you, and since it was useful, it kind of got passed down from there."
"The maiden after Reimu?" Marisa said. "But you said we were your…so that would make her…"
"Your daughter!" Mami added helpfully. With her energy, she and Aunn must have gotten on very well.
"Our daughter?" Marisa said weakly. She looked at Reimu, not really knowing what she was looking for.
"A lot of the Hakurei maidens were adopted into the line, Marisa, remember?" Reimu said, blushing to the roots of her hair. She'd suddenly developed a keen interest in studying the snow at her feet.
"Wow, you two really are cute. It's kind of sickening! I can't even get a date," Mami said, laughing. "I hate to leave when this is so interesting, but we should probably get rid of this curse now, before it yanks me somewhere else and I have to explain this all over again. Mind helping me out?"
"Oh, um, right," Marisa said. All of these revelations were leaving her a bit light-headed. She and Reimu had a lot to talk about. "I've got some stuff in the house that'll help us get that junk off of you so you can get home. C'mon, in here"
Marisa pulled open the door to her house, and ushered them inside. Mami looked around, her eyes like saucers. "This is what the workshop originally looked like? This is such a mess! Ah, no offense! I mean, it is though, right? But I'm sure it works for you!"
"It is a mess, yeah," Marisa said with a sigh. Mami seemed nice, but a bit of an airhead. Marisa just couldn't envision this girl working behind the counter of the shop.
"So you're really brewing up potions and doin' magician stuff? And dressed like that?" Marisa asked, as she rooted around in a heap of metal and wooden gadgets for the doohickey she needed.
"Well, the shrine and the shop don't get very many visitors, but yes, I do make potions from time to time!" Mami said. "Some of the maidens have been more interested in magic than others, of course, but personally, I've always liked it." Mami brandished the Mini-Hakkero again. "In my time, the Mini-Hakkero is a Hakurei Shrine relic! It's been there for like forever. I just took it out to help resolve an incident the other day, actually."
A Hakurei shrine maiden blasting somebody with the Mini-Hakkero? That was an interesting mental image to chew on. She couldn't quite suss out if she found it oddly satisfying, or a little weird. Heck, probably both.
By the door, Reimu pulled her jacket back on. She'd managed to overcome her embarrassment and could meet Marisa's eyes again, albeit fleetingly. A general sense of profound awkwardness hung in the air between them. Yup, they definitely had some stuff to discuss.
"What are you planning, Marisa?" Reimu asked. "I'd expunge the curse myself, but if it's got some kind of a way to target or neutralize the Hakurei spiritual power, that could cause problems."
"Yeah, I'm not lookin' to have you disappear on me and end up hanging out with Yukari like two centuries ago," Marisa said. "I like you right where you are, thanks. I'm putting something together, so hang on." She set a few pouches of powders and herbs next to her, and began flipping through a stack of books.
Mami leaned over next to her, wearing her seemingly-customary smile. "Mind if I help?" she asked. "I'm sure I can't hold a candle to you, but I recognize a lot of these books."
"Sure thing, if you know what you're doing," Marisa said. "We're looking for something that won't just break this curse, but'll reverse it, to make sure you go right back to where you came from. I know I've got somethin' around here somewhere that can get the job done."
Mami turned out to be a surprisingly capable research assistant, helping Marisa sort through her collection and find what they needed with impressive speed. Marisa had to admit that she clearly did know her way around the place. The idea of a Hakurei shrine maiden elbow-deep in a cauldron had set Marisa's head to spinning.
"Okay, we got it!" Marisa said to Reimu, who had been reduced to pacing around by the doorway while Marisa and Mami talked sorcery. "I think this oughta do the trick." Marisa grabbed two pieces of chalk from a nearby desk, handed one to Mami, kneeled, and started to draw patterns on a rare clear spot on the floor. "Help me out with this, Mami."
Reimu stepped up behind the two of them as they drew, looking a little dubiously at the ritual circle as they sketched it out. "You're sure that this is going to work?" she asked.
"C'mon, Reimu, you gotta trust me on this one," Marisa said, a bit wounded.
"I think it will!" Mami said cheerfully. "All of the diagrams look right to me."
"If you say so," Reimu said. Being completely unable to help out probably wasn't doing wonders for her mood.
Marisa and Mami swept their chalk around to complete the diagram, and stood back up.
"Alright, now just stand right in the center there," Marisa said. Mami stepped over to the spot Marisa had indicated.
"It was fun meeting the two of you!" Mami said. "I hope me saying that stuff didn't change the future or anything."
"Thinking about how that works is giving me a headache," Reimu said. "Let's just not worry about it."
"Yeah, don't sweat it," Marisa said. "Now, time to get you home." She scooped up the spellbook she needed, flipped it open to the right page, and began to chant the incantation.
"When you see Aunn, tell her I say hello from the past," Reimu said, smiling wryly.
"I will!" Mami said. As Marisa continued to chant, the circle began to glow. A dark aura suddenly appeared around Mami, and began to peel free.
"Oh, I can tell it's working!" Mami said. "It feels like something's pulling me back." She waved. "Thanks again, you two!"
The dark aura pulled free completely, compressed to a flat line, and vanished. A moment later, Mami disappeared mid-wave, in a flash of light.
Marisa flashed Reimu a grin and a thumbs-up. "See, I told you it'd work!" She felt pretty proud of herself, she didn't mind saying. That had been a nice little bit of magic.
"Thanks, Marisa," Reimu said. "Sorry, I'm still a little hung up on seeing another Hakurei shrine maiden. That was a bizarre experience."
Flush with her success, Marisa had completely forgotten some of the things Mami had said. The revelations crashed back onto her like an avalanche. Her legs felt a little unsteady.
"Do you think she was tellin' the truth about everything?" Marisa said weakly, heat creeping back into her cheeks. "I mean…"
"Oh, um, right," Reimu said, fumbling around for words and failing to find them. She'd started blushing again too. "Well, even if she was, it's not like our future's set in stone. Magic and curses work in weird ways, after all."
"Yeah, that's true," Marisa said. "She could be from a completely different world or somethin', even. Who knows?"
Her words settled heavily in the quiet air of the shop. Neither of them could think of what to say next.
Marisa's stomach twinged.
"Dang it, I'm just gonna say it," she said. "It wouldn't be all that bad if she was from our future, alright?"
Would Reimu think that was weird? She just had to get it off her chest and clear the air. It wasn't like she was saying all that much. Just that she wasn't upset thinking about it, or anything.
"It didn't sound bad to me either," Reimu said a bit bashfully, looking relieved.
"I mean, I get to teach the next Hakurei maiden how to do some proper magic for a change?" Marisa continued with a mischievous grin. "That sounds pretty fun to me. Can't have you fillin' their head with all sorts of boring stuff when they oughta be learning how to use magic with some style. And the…rest of it didn't sound so bad either." She fidgeted with one of the buttons on her coat, unable to look Reimu in the eye. "Don't you think?"
Reimu reached out, tilted up Marisa's chin to meet her eyes with one hand, and slipped her fingers through Marisa's with the other. "I think so, too," she said, squeezing Marisa's hand, her eyes sparkling.
Only time would tell what the future held, but if it ended up going the way they'd heard, no, Marisa didn't think that would bother her much at all.
Author's Note:
This story takes place in the same loosely-connected continuity as my other ReiMari stories. In particular, it takes place after "The Hakurei Shrine & Kirisame Magic Shop", which is why Marisa's house is located a few minutes' walk away from the shrine in this story.
