Date: 10/08/23
Weather: Warm days.
Dear Diary.
It's the final week of the training session and apparently the BigBoss had other ideas. Meeting up with Meiling for the morning session the gatekeeper let me know about the 'team meeting' that was being held in the library. I had time to get my phone to record the audio for transcribing.
[Beginning of meeting]
R.S.: *Audible Yawn* "Is everyone here? Good. We can start then."
P.K.: *Audible Yawn* "Remi... Did we really have to do this so early?"
R.S.: "Well... Since R.F. needs all the time he can get, morning is the only time. You didn't get a good night sleep? I thought I told Sakuya to tell everyone about today's meeting."
I.S.: "I have informed everyone as you instructed milady."
P.K.: "Yeah, Sakuya did let me know, I was just up late reading..."
H.M.: "That's Lady Patchouli for you."
R.F.: "..."
P.K.: "Quiet Meiling..."
F.S.: *Audible giggling*
R.F.: "So... What's today's meeting about BigBoss?"
R.S.: "Yes. It's about the schedule for the final week of your training."
R.F.: "We're changing things?"
R.S.: "Yes. For the past three weeks you've made visible improvements on your skills. I'm confident that you're going to beat Youmu Konpaku, but I want to absolutely guarantee your victory."
F.S.: "Sis, can't you just manipulate big brother's fate so he wins anyway?"
R.F.: "Wait... she can do that?"
P.K.: "How long have you been living with us R.F.? I'd imagine that you'd know about these things."
R.F.: "Well... That's incredibly specific..."
R.S.: *Sound of clearing throat* "Regardless, while it would be easy for me to just make R.F. win, Yuyuko Saigyouji would probably find out, and besides I'm not here to hold his hand through out all his trials and tribulations."
R.F.: "Yeah, I'm not a fan of getting carried myself. Win or lose I want to do it with my own capacity."
F.S.: "You'd better not lose big brother!"
R.F.: "I'm not planning on losing Flandre, if I do I would literally die."
F.S.: "..."
K.K.: "..."
F.S.: "What?!"
R.F.: "So, turns out living in the netherworld as a human slowly turns them into ghosts."
F.S.: "BUT THAT GARDENER GIRL IS HUMAN TOO!"
R.F.: "Yeah, half human half ghost."
H.M.: "I think she's half human half phantom actually"
R.F.: "Is there a difference?"
H.M.: "Well ha-"
R.S.: *Audible clearing throat* "Technicality aside. I will address how R.F. will spend the last week. Today R.F. will be training as normal, tomorrow, R.F. will be taking a break, the day after R.F. will go under intense training, fourth day R.F. will take a break, fifth day, R.F. will go on another intense training. The last two days R.F. will do light training. Ending the week. Did you get all that Big Brother?"
R.F.: "I think I go- wait did you call me Big Brother?"
R.S.: "If there are no objections, everyone is dismissed. Sakuya."
I.S.: "Yes Milady."
F.S.: "Hey Wait! He's MY big brother!"
H.M.: "I guess you really are the mansion's de facto 'brother'~"
R.F.: "I... I guess so..."
H.M.: "Ready to go train?"
R.F.: "Yeah, just gotta stop by my room."
H.M.: "Don't keep me waiting for too long."
[End of meeting]
I'm kind of glad that the BigBoss laid things out for me... Granted now I have to deal with really intense training session every other day, glad it's just going to be two of them. On the topic of training. I've gotten pretty used to training with Meiling. With every session I can feel her holding back less and less. With every thrust of the spear going from grazing the gatekeeper to completely missing or being deflected, at the same time I can actually feel myself improve every day. Today's session ended with me losing. It almost feels nostalgic being on the ground completely out of breath.
...
For the afternoon session there wasn't as much training as I would have liked. It was mostly just Patchouli complaining about how she has to put even more effort in throwing Danmaku bullets at me. Koakuma was focused on trying to calm the librarian down. I on the other hand tried using that frustration to help me train a bit more. Basically telling Patchouli to imagine me being Marisa stealing the entire library's worth of books. It worked. I think that's the very few times where I saw the librarian break a sweat, and I think it's my very first time seeing Patchouli sweat off like half her weight. That being said... Written? A genuinely upset Librarian is real scary. It felt like the entire library was filled to the brim with Danmaku bullets... Absolutely suffocating...
...
Evening session with Izayoi felt surprisingly more relaxed than the morning and afternoon session. There was a definite training through the evening but a good portion was me and Izayoi talking about the event the entire mansion was going trough. Honestly, I think this is my very first time conversing with Izayoi for what felt like hours. When I first met the Boss, she had an aura of superiority where I was completely out of her league in every aspect, but talking to the Maid about mundane things and the duel coming up... She felt surprisingly... Human...
-R.F.
Date: 10/09/23
Weather: Warm days.
Dear Diary.
Well, today was a break day, but I kept myself busy. Morning routine that didn't involve Meiling beating me to a pulp, but just light stretching and sparring for fun. That aside, I can't say the same for the Fairy maids. Those giggly float-y things were going all out with their Danmaku bullets. Something that I reflected on while sparring with Meiling was that compared to the first day when the maids were having a blast... blasting me, today felt like I could very easily see the gaps between the bullets, and I could move through them even without the Foresight guiding me.
...
Afternoon 'break' was in the library. Patchouli tuckered herself out from yesterday's bout, so Koakuma was watching over the library. The first half was me brushing up on the spells that I've learned. Getting the barrier's timing just right, making sure that the arcane dash, the recall came out as quickly as possible, the most important thing, marking things with the enchantment circle to guarantee spells like Whispers worked properly. Koakuma was real kind to help me with all that. The second portion was just relaxing with Flandre. The little Vampire and me just enjoying each other's company while reading our books. It felt like I was back just baby sitting Flandre. It felt rather nostalgic.
...
Now... Evening relaxation... I have to confess, when I'm given a full schedule of stuff to do and that gets taken away from me... I have a hard time filling that void... Back home I would have played games, or watched an unGogly amount of videos... but Gensokyo doesn't have electricity... let alone the internet... It felt strange not needing to to stuff... So I took a really long bath and got myself cleaned up. During the training session I did just did real fast wash so I can go from one session to next with meals in between... So having hours on hours to just really clean myself did feel refreshing. I also looked around and found Izayoi to get my hair trimmed. It was getting long enough to go down to my shoulder blades with split ends so getting it cut to my shoulders again felt refreshing, and I can style it as a short ponytail during the duel too. While I'm relieved that I found stuff to do for today... What in Gog's name am I going to do with the other breaks...
-R.F.
Date: 10/10/23
Weather: Warm days, cloudy days.
Dear Diary.
Three words... I Am Exhausted. By the end I felt like the me from the end of my first day of training. Those girls were not holding back... My hands are still shaking trying to write this entry... Starting with Meiling... I think she was straight up not holding back... My foresight was showing me what angle the gatekeeper was going to attack from, but the issue was that my body could barely keep up with that. Every parry with the spear and riposte would fail where she would just weave through the attack and knock the wind out of me... The scariest thing was that I still don't know if she's going all out...
...
Afternoon session with the librarian was slightly different. Unlike the usual warm up with Koakuma and Patchouli being the main event, it was a two versus one. The entire session felt extra harrowing even with Patchouli still kind of holding back due to her still recovering from two days ago. Eyes dry and blurry, muscles aching and exhausted, brain firing on all cylinders while running on fumes from not eating enough, incredibly dense Danmaku bullet patterns... It felt like the perfect storm of... I think Murphy's law? "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong"?
...
Any now the evening session things were a bit easier. It was with Flandre, because yesterday's break had the BigBoss scheduled. While I still got my butt kicked by the little Vampire, I can tell that she held back, like even more than usual. Flandre held back so much in fact that she ended the session early so I can recover... While I felt... and still feel a bit down from that instance I'm grateful that the little Vampire went easy on me.
-R.F.
Date: 10/11/23
Weather: Cool cloudy days.
Dear Diary.
Thank Gog for the break day... Man I needed this. For the first time in like... ever, I went to the morning exercise with Meiling very late, like late morning stretching session. The Gatekeeper seemed a little worried that I was a still hecking sore, and just helped me stretch to keep me limber, though I won't lie, even stretching was sore...
...
The afternoon was mostly me relaxing in the library reading up on some spells while Flandre acted as a tiny tiny blanket snuggling up to me. Something that I notice about both the Scarlet sisters is that I don't write enough is how cool their body temperature is. Probably due to the fact that them being Vampires mean that they're... kind of on the dead side. Unnerving feeling aside I appreciated the little Vampire's effort.
...
During the evening I decided to take a stroll around the lake. With the days being cooler there were less bugs. There were a few fairies flying around though. Ending my evening with a hot bath was a huge relief on my aching was the last time since I went on a walk, exploring bits of Gensokyo? It felt like forever...
-R.F.
Date: 10/12/23
Weather: Cool cloudy days.
Dear Diary.
The break was nice while it lasted... Because I am once again writing this entry feeling nothing but aches and sores... My body is bruised to heck and back... I think during the morning shift Meiling was actually holding back, but because my body wasn't recovered enough I got my butt handed to me. The Gatekeeper was even worried saying stuff like "I expected you to block that, you normally do." Well either Meiling has a standard for me that I can't reach or I can actually do better...
...
The afternoon session wasn't any better... Every dodges I made, every Danmaku bullets I blocked I could feel the pain and aches just radiate through my entire body, but unlike Meiling, Patchouli did NOT hold back. I wonder what got her all fired up... It's not like Marisa was there to Pilfer her books... Come to think of it I don't think she did that for quite some time. Regardless Patchouli didn't stop her Danmaku barrage until Flandre had to tell the librarian that I won't have a body to fight the Gardener with if she went that hard... I don't want to think about it but if the little Vampire wasn't there I think Patchouli would have beaten me with magic to the inch of my life... Now that's a scary thought.
...
BigBoss during the evening shift went surprisingly easy on me when I showed up to her chambers. I guess seeing me battered and bruised along with Flandre more or less tattling on her big sister about how the mean'ol librarian beat me up made her ease up on the intensity of the training session. The session itself was focused on offensives where I had to chase her down and actually hit her. To make a long story short, I didn't manage to land a single hit and I was really trying... That Vampire was just too fast, and even if I wasn't so sore I probably would have failed.
...
The two super intense training session predominantly got me more worried about the up coming duel... The Mansion crew more or less not holding back made me realize the gap between me and them... What about the gap between me and Konpaku? Can I even beat her?
-R.F.
Date: 10/13/23
Weather: Cloudy autumn.
Dear Diary.
The soreness is more manageable as I'm writing this entry. It was a lot worse when I woke up in the morning though. Today felt like a mix between the 'days off' and 'go all out' days. Morning was primarily focused on stretching and light sparring, taking each movement much slower and feeling how my body moved. That's stuff that I don't consciously think about, but moving at a snail's pace while sparring I could adjust each 'kicks' and 'punches' so they're a bit more... optimal? I guess that's one way to rationalize that. The 'sparring' match also felt more fluid compared to sparring at regular speed. It felt sort of foreign moving slow and all flow-y like. Reminds me of those Tai chi demonstrations.
...
The afternoon session was primarily focused on improving the spells that I knew. With a bit of Danmaku dodging near the end. I'm not sure if I just got good enough, or if I know the librarian and her little devil assistant, but I think the two were going noticeably easy on me. While I appreciate the two giving me a break I barely had to dodge and or deflect the incoming Danmaku bullets... Like its completely different from Meiling going easy on me, at least with the gatekeeper I can sort or learn something new... but with these two it was like a walk in the park...
...
Now... For the evening shift... I was just relaxing with Flandre out on the patio of the mansion. Meiling dropped by every so often asking if I was actually going to train with the little Vampire but Flandre basically deflected for me saying stuff like. "I'm helping big brother train his mental fortitude." Anyone with half a brain could tell that Flandre was just making things up, and I can tell that Meiling saw that too... She just let it happen since the little Vampire out ranked the Gatekeeper. Now... there's just one more day left to 'train' for the duel in two days... I know that the BigBoss told me to take it easy... but maybe I should kick it up a notch?
-R.F.
Date: 10/14/23
Weather: Cool and cloudy
Dear Diary.
Well, I sort of kicked it up a notch... Woke up feeling a lot more refreshed, and it feels strange that I can weave and graze through the fairy maid's Danmaku bullets with relative ease. Training with Meiling, the gatekeeper wanted to take things slow as per the BigBoss' order. While I obliged I think I subconsciously picked up the pace til Meiling told me to slow down. I'm not sure if it was because I was nervous? Maybe because I was feeling better? It's hard to say. All in all I worked up a good sweat.
...
Afternoon was pretty similar to yesterday's session. Going extra hard on optimizing my enchantment casting speed. I think the arcane level that I'm at currently is good enough to support me against Konpaku tomorrow, the issue is actually tagging her so I can enchant her with the necessary enchantments... I'll figure that out when the time comes. The actual issue that I faced during the session was the librarian and her assistant... I had to ask repeatedly to Patchouli and Koakuma to hold back less. Thankfully the two did oblige in the end and I could actually practice dodging and deflecting Danmaku bullets properly.
...
The evening session with Izayoi was a lot better. I didn't have to ask the Boss repeatedly to go a little harder on me to keep me on my toes. I could tell that she was definitely holding back. The slashes with her knives, the way she threw them, I could deflect them with Lady Luck with zero troubles, the thing I think she focused on was endurance. The training session lasted til nightfall and I was sweating by the end. I appreciate Izayoi for mixing things up a little.
...
Before I wrote this entry a couple things happened. First was taking an extra long bath to relax my body and try to clear my head. Second was getting visited by Remilia right as I was about to write the entry... If I was a second slower she would have seen me writing on my little diary. I've kept this a secret for this long and I don't intend on getting caught now. That aside, the Bigboss and I had a little heart to heart. At first I thought she was going to drink a bit of my blood since she hasn't done that in a while, but nope; Remilia wanted to just talk about the duel that was going to happen tomorrow. I asked if she thought I was ready, and being the enigmatic Vampire that she was answered my question by asking how I thought about it, I answered "Yes" and I think she liked that answer, saying stuff like "Then you don't need to ask me." and adding that after the duel expect her to visit me more often since I was behind on the little 'blood tax'. That month of training, planning has come down to tomorrow's duel... I wont lie... While I do believe that I'll have a decent chance against Konpaku... I have butterflies in my stomach... I guess I'll see what fate has in stored for me...
-R.F.
Author's Note: Hello everyone, another entry finished, this one took a bit longer than I'd like. Thank you to Reviewer Omega Aki on keeping me on my toes with the spelling mistakes. I did catch a few after you pointed them out and I appreciate that, hopefully I made less or no spelling errors on this one. There are words that are intentionally misspelled such as 'Gog' instead of the word 'God' there are other words that native English speaker might not necessarily write/type but would understand verbally such as 'hecking' and words like that might not translate properly. I apologize for the inconvenience. The second point that Omega Aki mentioned was me misspelling 'Konpaku' I tried finding the last entry for any typos but failed to find them. If you or anyone could point out the specific times I've misspelled Youmu's Family name please let me know, on that note I want to very quickly clarify the couple unintentional and intentional name mention errors. I've tried to make sure that R.F. mentions a character mentions any Characters of 'western' origin by their last/family name I.E.:Remilia and Flandre and Characters of 'eastern' origins by their first/given name I.E. Konpaku, Hakurei, Shameimaru etc. I believe there was two unintentional exception is Meiling and Reisen, I believe that 'Hong' is her last/family name but because I've written R.F. mention her as Meiling for so long I'm just going to continue as such. R.F. calling Reisen, 'Ugongein' is due to me not knowing that Udongein was a nickname given to Reisen by Eirin, if I have to make a poor excuse, I guess I could say that R.F. didn't want to confuse the two between Reisen and Tewi since they both share the same last name? The one intentional exception is Marisa. By the rules placed for myself R.F. should have always mention Marisa as 'Kirisame' since she's of eastern origin even with her western looks and aesthetics, but because R.F. never learned Marisa's last/family name he only knows her as 'Marisa' and mentions her as such. With that said, I'll try and post the next entry a bit sooner, until then. Take care. -RhyFlow.